Queensland Business Monthly

 

This article was originally published in the Queensland Business Monthly, a lift out in the Courier Mail, Friday 29th of August 2014. Written by Nicole Madigan. 

 

 

Having worked in the accounting industry for just a few years, Ben Walker quickly found himself brainstorming new concepts, determined to make his industry of choice less dry.

“I wanted to create an accounting firm that was far from the typical and stereotypical,” says Walker, who dubs himself “chief inspiration officer”.

The result is an accounting firm that’s as non-typical as you’re going to get.

It’s central hub is an interlinked coffee hub, Inspire Cafe, which not only serves as a connection between Walker’s customers and his business, but has become a landmark in its own right.

“We have businesses from around Brisbane and even flying in from places such as Melbourne and Singapore to run their own workshops and events here,” Walker says.

The 25-year-old developed the idea after outgrowing his first office space, where he launched Inspire CA as the “non-accountants’ accountant”, aimed at helping creative agencies understand the numbers that drive their business.

Despite the success of the business, growing from one to four staff in four months, bringing the cafe from concept to reality would be an expensive process.

So, in addition to the traditional methods, Walker sought out crowd-funding, which essentially means financing a project through contributions of various size from a large group, typically via the internet.

“The crowd funding was an ambitious idea,” he says.

“We used crowd funding site Indiegogo and had available perks like ‘Coffee for Life’ where the funder received coffee for the rest of their life.”

With the cafe installed and ready for service, Walker went about positioning it as a networking venue for local business people and like-minded thinkers – a place that was linked and unlinked to the accounting firm.

“We ran an email campaign of video updates for the cafe. Every week or two, I’d shoot a short video of the build and fitout and upload it on to YouTube and send this out to our audience,” he says.

Citing innovation as paramount to success, even in the seemingly mundane industry of accounting, Walker says his aim is to lead the profession through cutting edge innovations such as online signing and cloud accounting.

And so far, it’s paying off.

“We’ve received plenty of commendations and encouragements from business owners, entrepreneurs and other accounting firms globally of what we’ve created here.

While it wasn’t easy, it was definitely worth it and I really look forward to developing the community even more.”

 

7 Impressive Marketing Blogs You Can Share With Your Clients

 

I’m sure that you can relate with your clients that developing engaging content takes an enormous, disciplined effort to get momentum.

So does everything that’s worth it.

Best of all? Like the promise of a flywheel, it gets easier as you go.

But what do you share with your clients during the time in between your own blog posts? There’s plenty of other blogs out there with exceptional content that you can share – and it is sure to add some serious value to your clients.

Here’s 7 of the Most Impressive Marketing Blogs

1. The Moz Blog

Focus: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Moz is heavy into PR, SEO, websites and everything digital marketing. It also has some very impressive tools that you can use to monitor and better your websites.

The Moz Blog is sourced from a wide variety of contributors too, which I find gives you great variety of opinion and expertise.

2. Inbound Hub, by HubSpot

Focus: Inbound Marketing

This one is all about inbound marketing. So is there ‘All-in-one’ inbound marketing software and these guys are just giving away the value!

While I don’t know the depths of their product, I have been a reader of their content for a good year or more now.

3. CopyBlogger

Focus: Content Development for Online Marketing

This is a very impressive website, and I recommend registering for their free membership. There’s over a dozen content heavy eBooks that are available just for providing your name and email.

4. Seth Godin’s Blog

Focus: Changing everything

Seth’s insights are incredible. And I remember reading once that he even writes them daily at 4 something a.m.

Seth is also the author of 17 books, all with golden nuggets to help businesses skyrocket.  He is a ‘must follow’ for any business looking for a marketing edge (which should be any business!).

5. KISSmetrics

Focus: Marketing Analytics

Great for clients with SaaS, ecommerce or a heavy amount of traffic to their sites. KISSmetrics is another blog with plenty of giveaway eBooks too.

Some serious insights for those interested in the numbers behind their online marketing.

6. Insights, by Sprout Social

Focus: Social Media Marketing

There’s a massive focus on the relationship with the customer in this blog.

The authors share plenty of social media tips and best practices together with examples of how businesses have successfully integrated social media.

7. MailChimp Blog

Focus: Email Marketing

The MailChimp Blog provides some great value for businesses that integrate email marketing into what they do. I would hope that email marketing should be a critical part in any business today.

The blog also doubles as an instruction manual or ‘best pratice’ reference guide to the MailChimp product itself.

 

If you’ve read a phenomenal marketing blog that I haven’t mentioned here, do share it in the comments section below!

Anthill Online 30under30 2014

Ben has been humbled to be named as one of the Anthill Online 30under30 for 2014.

30under30 is an Anthill initiative that was launched in early 2008 to encourage and promote entrepreneurship among young Australians.

The program provides recognition to 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours.

To be eligible for this year’s program, the entrepreneur must be under 30 years of age on 1 August of this year and must be an Australian citizen. (In other words, if someone asks you, on 1 August this year, how old you are and you say, “30″, you’re no longer eligible.)

 

The excerpt from the original article is below.

Ben Walker, QLD (b. 1989)

Name: Ben Walker
Age: 25 (born January 1989)
Gender: Male
State: QLD
Known for:  Inspire CA and Inspire Cafe

Forget time sheets; forget charging by the hour. Forget difficult to use software and glazing over in conversations with your accountant.

Inspire CA is for the business owner who wants to understand what drives their business, while partnering with an accounting firm who takes ownership of what we believe truly is the role of the business accountant.

“I started Inspire CA to head in the opposite direction to the traditional old way of the accounting industry,” Inspire Founder, Ben Walker, told us.

Ben’s activities are driven by a desire to completely shake up the accounting industry. This led Ben to open Inspire Cafe. As the name implies, Inspire Cafe is a coworking space, located in Newstead, Brisbane.

The company hosts a variety of entrepreneurial events — with a notable slant toward jazzing up otherwise blandish accounting topics – at the cafe each month. (One recent event was “Kill the Time Sheet — Value Pricing: Where to Begin.” Sounds cool).

And Ben is working toward wow factor in his business.

“I really want to build a business (or businesses) that create a “WOW” because of what they stand for and the way that it treats it’s clients – I want to put the ‘heart’ into accounting and lead as an example for other businesses,” he added.

Since its start in 2013, the Inspire family of businesses has been rapidly growing.

“I started with just me on my own, February 2013 with $30,000 in annual equivalent revenue from clients that I brought with me over the years.

We quickly grew to 4 people in 4 months – and in our first 12 months, we grew ten-times in annual equivalent revenue!” Ben told us.

Because of his business’ rocketing to fruition with such rapid growth, Ben Walker joins the ranks of the 2014 Anthill 30under30!

Anthill asks: Ben Walker, what’s your super power?

Haha… I got some feedback on this from the ol’ “peer group” and apparently the closest super hero is the Juggernaut from X-Men… for a variety of reasons, mainly because I’m unstoppable (or rather, I don’t stop).

Smashing Sales – How to Create a Winning Sales Process

We’re all masters at something.  But never masters at everything.

Sales can be a nasty roadblock to an otherwise phenomenal business.

I’ve jotted down a few points below of how you can very simply streamline the sales in your business.

Have a Sales Process

Sometimes procrastination to follow up leads can come from a lack of understanding the next steps of sales.  There’s plenty of great information out there on sales in general, but nothing very practical of how that should appear within an organisation.

A few key components I’ve found to make an effective sales process:

Have a ‘Vetting’ Step, Up Front

Whether it’s an online form, an application or a phone call, this is a great way to work out whether or not the prospect is a good fit for you.

We all get that gut feel when someone doesn’t sound quite right for your business, so what a great way to move them on, with the smallest drain on your time.

Ask some good questions up front, and you’ll know whether to take them further in the process.

Leverage Your Coffee Time

You as the principal are usually wearing many, many hats in the business.  Why not create an effective way of learning about your clients, and them learning about you? It could knock off a good 30 – 45 minutes of time in the first coffee meeting of the usual ‘Getting to Know You’ time – and is a very effective way of directing a conversation.

Make sure you focus this meeting on the client’s needs and ask plenty of questions so you know exactly where you can help the client.  Remember to keep digging through layers, as the first answer is not usually the problem, but a symptom.

Time to hit your proposal, but before you close the meeting…:

B.A.M.F.A.M.

A self explanatory acronym: “Book A Meeting From A Meeting”. This is an awesome discipline drummed into me by a good friend MC of Practice Paradox (and plenty of help with the above too!).

BAMFAM’ing helps to keep the sales process moving, in a mutually agreed fashion.  Extraordinarily effective, and always always always book in the next meeting / phone call / follow up.

Pretty Up Your Proposals

If you’re a Creative Agency, surely you’re all over your own delicious marketing collateral.  Don’t let the sales experience pull down the prospect’s expectations!

There’s some amazing, easy to set up and use, cloud based proposal tools available at ‘no-brainer’ prices.  Some of them let you include video and images to support your proposals.  Most have features such as options in your proposal, online acceptance and signing, custom domain & branding, and creating a proposal from a template or previous proposal.

Some great products are:

Quote roller

TinderBox

Proposable

Prettier proposals should also lead to a higher conversion rate too. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for each new client!

Track Your Leads in a CRM

You know what a CRM is, you may even have one, but take advantage of it. Use it!

A CRM used effectively can keep all your prospects’ records, touch points, the stage of where they are in your sales process, and even keep track of your chance of conversion.  Some CRMs will allow you to run a ‘weighted sales funnel’ report, which calculates the dollar figure based on historical conversion rates at certain stages in the sales funnel.  There’s some serious forecasting!

Again, there’s plenty of options out there, depending on what suits your business. We use InfusionSoft, but there are many others such as:

SalesForce

Capsule CRM

Constant Contact

Base CRM

Even if you use Excel or a whiteboard, make sure you’re keeping track of it all!

Automatically Measure Sales KPI’s

Coming back to your business having a Strength in Numbers, most of the tools above allow you to run reports on your key sales numbers.  Simple numbers like your conversion rate or average days from initial contact to becoming a client will allow you to forecast many other numbers in your business.

 

Implementing the tools and processes mentioned above will guarantee a smoother ride in your sales journey!

World’s first gluten free… accounting firm cafe? – bmag

 

The original article was published by bmag, written by Taylare Madden on Sunday 6th July, 2014.

 

Public Practice Innovation Case Study – Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand

 

 The original article was published by the Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand. Written by Bernard Kellerman and photography by Marcus Bell.

A Brisbane CA has created a café where small business owners can network as the centrepiece of his accounting practice.

Benjamin Walker CA rejoices in the title of Chief Inspiration Officer at his fast-growing accounting practice, Inspire CA, near Brisbane’s CBD.

And inspiration was needed as Walker rode the steepest of learning curves to reshape his workspace, placing a café as its centrepiece, and enlisting crowd funding to make it happen. While plenty of commercial office premises have a café downstairs and professional offices above, the two operations run by Walker are not independent of each other. He’s set it up so each one makes the other business more valuable.

“It’s been a massive disruptor, especially in an industry like accounting,” Walker says.

“It’s become a hub for small business owners to network. Other firms are now asking if they can run sessions in our meeting rooms, too.”

The evolution from idea to execution was rapid. Walker left a big four firm to start up a one-man accounting business in February 2013. Others joined him, and the new firm rapidly outgrew its serviced offices, leading Walker to search six months later for a more permanent base with space to grow.

It was a throwaway line from his mentor Paul Dunn, an ex-Hewlett Packard engineer turned global marketing guru, which first planted the idea.

“You know, I’ve always thought an accountant’s office is boring, too dry. Why don’t you set up a café as the centrepiece of the office?” Dunn suggested.

“From the tone of his voice, I figured he wasn’t joking,” says Walker.

But then, rather than the small café Dunn most likely had in mind, Walker came across an empty shell, a warehouse that had once been a furniture store, where adding a few walls would create large meeting rooms and open spaces as well as a café on the ground floor, with an open plan office above for his accounting business.

Walker needed what he said was “a crash course on commercial leasing” before he signed in October last year.

The brick walls weren’t the biggest obstacle to Walker’s ambitions to launch the café business on 6 December. There was the small matter of funding, and other sticking points, such as getting a liquor licence and finding the right staff.

“It’s learning on-the-fly,” he says.“It’s been an interesting journey and it’s made me feel more resourceful.”

The building owner offered a lease incentive towards the fit-out, but more was needed.

“Given that we were a growing accounting firm, we couldn’t just lash out for the full cost of the fit-out. But we had to find a way to make it work, we had a launch date and we didn’t want to have to put back the opening night. That’s why I turned to crowd funding, through a website called Indiegogo,” says Walker.

The site tapped a large community, although it was mainly clients, former colleagues and mentors who pitched in with funding. To sweeten the deal, Walker offered incentives such as prepaid credit at the café.

“We matched contributions dollar for dollar with credit for food and coffee once we were up and running, and had other options such as a ticket to the launch party as incentives.”

This netted Inspire CA “just shy of” $5000 which Walker says did go quickly, but took the edge off the expenses and added to an already growing client base.

Advertising pays off

Walker, who has never worked in hospitality, also had to find key staff – and hiring a great barista was top of his list.

“One thing my mentor, Paul Dunn, taught me was the power of language,” says Walker. “Our ad called for an EXCEPTIONAL BARISTA. On the page, it just stood out.”

The person who met the brief also had the drive to be more than just a barista. He has become the café manager, now known as the firm’s Chief Espresso Officer.

The idea is catching on says Walker. One of his accounting colleagues in New Zealand has been inspired to clear space in the shopfront of his own office to make room for a café machine and a barista.

“There’s also another accountant I know in Jersey who is looking to do the same thing. We’ve also launched some co-working space upstairs, to let other businesses lease a hot desk or some permanent working space.”

Benjamin Walkers’s Tips for Business Owners who want to Embrace Disruptive Innovation

No excuses

Put yourself in a place where there’s no going back, no plan b. Think of Alexander the Great: when he landed on the foreign shore he burned his boats.

Embrace

Be quick to adopt new ways. I don’t see firms who aren’t embracing the newest technology and software being around in a few years.

Connect

In a connected economy, it’s all about nurturing relationships. Your biggest and most effective source of new business is via recommendations from existing customers and clients.

Differentiate

Think how you can genuinely stand out in ways that appeal to customers and staff, such as an accounting firm that has no timesheets, no hourly rates, no jargon, no office politics, and a café that accepts American Express and doesn’t make people pay extra for their allergies.

Community

Create a community of business owners and entrepreneurs that allows cross-pollination of ideas between like-minded people who can support each other and create synergies.

Giving

Do what you do with a positive impact. We’re a part of the global giving initiative, B1G1: Business for Good. For every planning session we run with a business client, 75 women in India are trained to run micro-businesses. For every coffee sold in the café, a child receives access to life-saving water.

Announcing The Live Your Legend ‘Unofficial’ Music Video! – LiveYourLegend.net

The original article was published by LiveYourLegend.net, and written by Scott Dinsmore June 25, 2014.

Believe it or not, Live Your Legend has a music video…

And it’s not the one of me pathetically trying to break dance (which, unfortunately, you can find on YouTube – in the interest of focus, I’m not linking to it. 

But yes, we actually have a music video. In fact, we have a lot of them – dozens from cities and countries all over the world.

So today, I want to show off your work.

When we first launched Live Your Legend LOCAL, our in-person communities around the world, I threw down a 30-second dance contest challenge asking each group to film their own dance that embodied what it meant to do work that mattered, and to surround themselves with like-minded, inspiring (and kinda crazy) people. I promised the winner that we’d feature their group’s video and any related projects on LYL to share with all of you.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when the videos started to roll in, but I was.

From Australia to Dubai and everywhere in between, the show of vulnerability, creativity, passion – and dare I say talent – left me in awe. I expected some funny videos, but I did not expect music videos, trains and choreography. I should have known better!

It’s been a little while since our January 7th global meetup, and hundreds of groups have met since then, which is incredible. I thank you for your patience. We quickly realized choosing a winner was impossible, so instead we tried to base our choice on “most creative”, which left us with two standouts…

The winners of our 30-second dance contest are Ben Walker from Brisbane, Australia and Linda Buchner from Kansas City, Missouri!

Filming a video is not easy. Nor is dancing in front of strangers. Then try filming a dance video with people you just met in a bright room with little or no alcohol – for the world to see – and suddenly you’re on a totally different level.

We talk a lot about how authenticity and vulnerability are at the heart of genuine connection – both with those around you and those observing (i.e. your audience). That’s what I’ve loved most about seeing our communities around the world do their thing. Ben and Linda are star examples.

As for the other submissions, have no fear – we’ll be showing off your rhythm when we debut our LYL Local video montage at the World Domination Summit LYL pre-party and beer tasting we’re hosting in Portland on July 11th. Our first 150 spots filled up, but I just released a few more, so if you’re anywhere near Portland (you don’t have to be attending WDS), come join us for my favorite LYL and Connect With Anyone reunion of the year! 

For now, let’s focus the well-deserved spotlight on Ben and Linda’s dance moves and passion projects as we get ready for the fun to come. Press play, then spend a little time with their work to see how you can help further the cause – because as we know, no one does anything alone…

Dance Party #1: Live Your Legend LOCAL Brisbane, Australia – Hosted by Ben Walker

Click here to watch video

Now here’s a little about what Ben’s working on, in his own words…

Inspire Cafe: An Entrepreneur’s Hideout & Coworking Cafe Built in the Office of an Accounting Firm!?

A few months into starting an accounting firm in the complete opposite direction to the industry’s norm, I wanted to create something really radical! What we came up with was a cafe at the centre of our accounting firm, which also acts as a coworking space and entrepreneur hideout for the business community.

Fitting with my vision of connecting and equipping entrepreneurs to grow, Inspire Cafe took form. Now we’re hosting a massive range of events, from meeting room and boardroom rentals to book launches of local authors, networking events for local business groups and LYL Local!

We’re a totally gluten free and organic cafe too – we know allergies, and don’t like it when people feel left out. We created Inspire Cafe just to be that hideout, where you know other entrepreneurs are in the same boat all together.

Our ideal accounting clients are entrepreneurs and business owners in creative industries and professional services, so the fit is perfect. And since launching in February of 2013, we’ve grown by over 10x!

How you can help: 

If you’re ever floating through Brisbane and looking for a place to relax with your laptop, hook up to Wi-Fi and punch out a blog post or a few hours of work on the road, be sure to drop in!

Also, we’ve recently written a free guide to help entrepreneurs and business owners understand and manage their cash flow. You can download it on our homepage. Hope it’s helpful!

Learn more about our coworking space here: Inspire Cafe

Fun fact about Ben: My fiancé reckons that I do a really good impression of a goat!!

You can join Ben’s LYL Local Brisbane group here

 

Dance Party #2: Live Your Legend LOCAL Kansas City, Missouri – Hosted by Linda Buchner

Click here to watch video

Now check out what Linda’s working on, in her own words…

At-Risk High School Students Build Efficient Electric Vehicles and Take Them on the Road Showing America that the Next Generation of Innovators Are Where We’d Least Likely Look

Four years ago, I co-founded MINDDRIVE, an after school program for at-risk high school students. Our model, which includes heavy involvement of volunteer mentors from all walks of life, involves approaching education from a hands-on, experiential way.

We encourage creativity, innovation, problem solving, teamwork and collaboration through projects specifically related to the environment. Our primary projects have been the design, restoration, and conversion of gas-powered cars to being fully electric.

To date, we’ve converted 2 Indy Champ cars, one Lotus Esprit and 5 vintage Volkswagon Karmann Ghias. To prove their efficiency and celebrate their success, we take the students on an annual trip where they share their story with their peers and the general public as we travel places they’ve never dreamed of going!

How you can help:

We’ve seen the impact that can happen when adults get involved in the education of the children of their community. It’s huge! Especially with the at-risk, lower income, minority communities where role models may not be prevalent, a strong voice of encouragement goes a long way.

So come join our Raise Your Hand Movement by signing up on our “Click to be Counted” campaign. We want to create a community of like-minded people who believe that together we can move the needle in education.

Learn more here: MINDDRIVE

Fun fact about Linda:

I used to be afraid of most inner city high school kids. I don’t have any kids of my own so I felt like a fish out of water – who am I to start such a program?! Seeing the lights come on in the eyes of these kids has changed my life and my heart!

You can join Linda’s LYL Local Kansas City group here

 

7 Things Business Owners MUST Implement BEFORE June 30

 

We often find in business that many entrepreneurs and business owners are moments away from realising the potential that a few small changes in their modus operandi (or “method of operation”) can have on their business.  This is without mentioning the amount of planning and strategy that can be used for significant tax savings if implemented before 30 June.

We recently put together a webinar with Paul Dunn of B1G1 into the “7 Things Business Owners MUST Implement Before 30 June”.  Those seven things are:

Tax Planning Strategy

This is an opportunity where, when executed correctly, can save businesses tens of thousands of dollars.  A tax planning strategy must be implemented before the financial year ends for the greatest effect.  Correctly structuring distribution of profits, working out what expenses to pay this side of the financial year, or after – and many more opportunities are considered in a tax planning strategy.

Business Structure Review

Before the financial year ends is a perfect time to review your current business structure.  Any changes that need to be implemented can be set up ready for the new financial year, and it also gives and opportunity to weigh in on the tax planning opportunities above.  The correct business structure is essential in many aspects of running a business.

Real Time Accounting Software such as Xero

This is a must to get up to date with the changing times. If you haven’t already adopted real time accounting software, now is the time!  Real time accounting software is best implemented at the start of a financial quarter, the next of which is 1 July.  There is plenty to have ready by what we call the “conversion date”, so it is best to start planning for this at least two weeks prior to year end.

A 90 Day “Change Up” Action Plan

To set yourself up for the financial year, it’s best to break down the year into actionable 90 day quarters.  The task then is to identify important numbers for each 90 days.  In the book ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’, co-author Sean Covey talks about the “WIG”, or “Wildly Important Goal”.  This is the key number or key metric that will have the greatest impact on your business.  This kind of business-wide, laser focus has turned big businesses around from losing millions of dollars, to record breaking profits.  Brainstorm some key numbers for the next 90 days, and write down the greatest one, with projects to implement to help you get there.

A One Page Strategic Plan

Another management and employee engagement tool is an effective business plan.  Most businesses will have started with a 30 page plan, that has never been updated, let alone actually read through since is was established.  Verne Harnish has introduced to the business world, his one-page plan.  This is all of the key metrics, goals, SWOT analysis and many more strategies of a business on a single page.  Each team member in the business also has a tailored section of the one-page plan, specific to their role in the organisation.  This is a no-brainer to implement to set your business up for a successful financial year!

Budget & Cashflow Forecasts for FY 2015

If you don’t have a budget and cash flow forecast for the 2015 financial year, you’re going to have a bad time.  Budgets and cash flow forecasts give you the ability to sleep easier at night, knowing in advance whether or not you’re going to be able to put food on the table.  Not only this, it allows time in advance, if there is something coming up which you need additional cash to account for.

A Management and Accountability Schedule

Finally, once you’ve put together your strategic one-page plan, you have your budgets and cash flow forecasts ready, you’ve got your wildly important goal for the next 90 days, it is important to then set yourself some management and accountability rhythms.  What we mean by rhythms, is meetings or certain dates that you will be accountable to your management team, or your advisers.

A lot of small business owners hold their team members to extraordinary levels of accountability.  While this is great, the business owner often lacks accountability to someone else, which is a critical driver of business performance.

Before the financial year starts, identify an appropriate adviser who understands your business to keep you accountable on a regular, planned basis.

5 Ideas to Quickly Gain Credibility for Your Service Business

 

When you’re starting a new service business or offering a new service, it’s important to maximise credibility and confidence for your first customers or clients, whether through review sites, social media or word-of-mouth.

Unfortunately, people are often nervous about buying a product or service when they can’t find any positive feedback about it. And until someone is willing to “go first” and provide that feedback, you’re stuck in the classic catch-22 situation.

So how do you encourage people to give your product or service a go in the first place? Here are five ideas to help you out.

1. Discount or Waive Your First “Test Run”

While a lot of children want to grow up and be astronauts, I doubt many of them would have wanted to be the first person in space. Things can go wrong—and unfortunately have (e.g. Space Shuttle Challenger).

It’s the same with business. People will rarely pay full price to be the guinea pig for your product or service. So why not get a few friendly prospects or clients and offer them a discount in return for honest feedback? Tell them you are ‘in early release’ or ‘prototyping the service’ for example. And avoid use of the word ‘discount’ if you can. Instead, use ‘Foundation Member’, ‘Early Adopter Pricing’, or ‘First Mover Pricing’ for example. Just use words that ‘fit’ with your target market. Discount implies ‘cheap’ and affects peoples’ perception of your quality.

Be sure to educate your early users of what the normal price will be, so that they are fully aware of the price advantage they are getting. They won’t appreciate the value of what you are giving them, unless you educate them to it.

2. Create Absolute Transparency

This applies to all aspects of running your business, but especially in the early stages when you’re bringing new clients on board. They don’t want any stone left unturned. What’s the point of them signing up for your product or service only to find out it isn’t what they expected?

Brainstorm common questions your prospects may have, such as:

• What is the value for me?
• Where could it go wrong?
• What is my outcome?
• What are the non-tangible benefits?
• Has anyone else done this apart from you, and what were the results?

Once you’re done, put together a document that answers these questions or be sure to include it in your pitch or proposal. This will give your prospect a lot more certainty.

3. Offer a Guarantee

A simple idea, especially when you’re certain the client will benefit from it, is to offer a guarantee to reduce their level of risk. Just make sure your guarantee comes from a position of confidence rather than coercion.

Bad example: “If you don’t think this

will be great for you, we’ll give your money back if you go ahead and find it to be true.”

Good example: “We believe in this

so much we’ll refund your investment if you don’t agree that it’s every bit as good as we say it is.”

You can see that the good example uses positive words (believe, agree, good) and tries to limit the use of negative words or concepts. You want the message of your guarantee to be “we totally believe in how good it is” rather than, “we’re unsure and will refund you if that’s the case”.

4. Practice What You Preach

This is one of our favourite ideas, and for good reason. After all, if you’re not applying it to your business, then why would your clients?

For instance, we love Xero and implementing it for business owners who’ve used alternatives in the past and know of nothing better. It’s a big move for most people, and there are concerns at every turn.

How do we alleviate a lot of those concerns? By telling them:

• We use Xero every day in our own business
• Every client or prospect that has come on board has switched to Xero (and none has switched back).

In our coaching and growth program, the Inspire MBA, we also suggest that our clients implement many tools and processes we’ve already tried. That means we can answer their concerns from experience rather than just a textbook.

Would you trust a personal trainer who isn’t following their own advice? Make sure you’re using the product or the process you’re encouraging your clients and prospects to use whenever you can.

5. Over-Service and Include Supporting Products or Services

Another way to ‘sweeten the deal’ for those first few people taking the journey is to offer additional or supporting services you wouldn’t normally include. This could be as little or as much as you wish, depending on the scalability of those extras.

But be careful. You need to make it clear these extras aren’t part of your normal service and won’t be available forever. The last thing you want is to misalign your clients’ expectations and lower the value of your service offering.

There’s no easy path to getting your first few case studies or testimonials. You need to just give it a go, and learn from every interaction and outcome.

The good news is the better you get at this, the easier it will be to offer additional services. You’ll get great at launching, testing and adjusting your approach. And by doing that you’ll gain credibility quickly and grow your business much more effectively.

Planning to Profit: How the Best Businesses Set their Revenue and Profit Targets for Growth

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” – Benjamin Franklin

Most small business owners know this quote (and the meaning behind it) all too well. But when it comes to business growth, you need to more than just plan what you want from your business. You need to know how to plan for it.

And that’s where a lot of small businesses get it wrong.

What do you base revenue and profit targets on? To achieve your lag indicators—such as revenue and profit—you work backwards to the lead indicators that will create these results. There’s no point setting a revenue goal of $x when you don’t know how to get to $x. The trick is to identify your lead indicators and then work out the numbers you need to achieve in these areas that will then automatically result in your target revenue and profit.

Setting Process Goals, not Product Goals

Product goals are where you set a target and work towards it without any real strategy behind it. You just keep working and hope you ‘get closer’ to it.

Process goals are where you work towards the inputs that create the goal. You break down the big goal into the processes needed to get to the product.

Revenue and profit are only the result of inputs or processes. For instance, your revenue consists of Average transaction value x Average number of transactions per client per year x Total number of clients.

You could go back even further and work out how to calculate total number of clients. Depending on the type of business, Total number of clients might result from (Existing clients x Retention rate) + (Sales meetings x Conversion rate). From there you can drill down further to determine the lead indicators that result in the number sales meetings, for example, Number of enquires x Conversion rate to sales meeting.

You can see that a focus on lead indicators like these allows you to focus your efforts and it makes it more achievable and predictable for you to hit your lag indicator results. You might, for example, identify that your marketing campaigns and systems are generating a sufficient number of enquiries, but that these enquires are not being converted into enough sales meetings. That allows you to then look at processes such as how the enquires are being handled and by whom, or perhaps looking at the quality of enquiries your style of marketing and promotion is generating.

We’ve seen cases where a business owner was unaware that a conversion rate in their business was low (for example, 20%) and that a focus on improving this then doubled the conversion rate, which doubled the number of sales meetings, which doubled the resulting revenue from new customers.

Nice. You don’t achieve improvements like this by focusing solely on lag indicators.

Drawing Your Profit Recipe

Just like a recipe, you need work out what makes up your revenue and profit. Take out a piece of paper or open up a new document on your computer, and map out the ingredients to your revenue and profit. (We gave some clues earlier as to what makes up revenue.)

Once you have that, it’s time to move onto your Profit and Loss Statement. Subtract from your revenue your Cost of Goods Sold (‘COGS’) and also your Overheads. The resulting figure is your profit.

What you need to do next is work out what your month-by-month revenue was across the last 12 months.

Setting Your Business’ KPIs

That’s looking to the past. The next step it to focus on the future: The next 12 months.

How many new clients will your marketing bring in each month? What will your average transaction value be? How many transactions on average will you provide to each client across 12 months? What will it cost to sell those services? What overheads will the business incur?

Write these numbers beside the correlating section on your recipe. You should be left with your profit, and a good idea of how to get there.

Yes, what you’re doing is ‘big picture’ stuff. But it’s important to realise your potential is usually higher than you think. You also have a documented process of how a certain revenue and profit figure is attainable. Now it’s time to drill down on these numbers.

Profit is Theory. Cash is Fact

This is a great start, and much more structured than what most business owners would have prepared. But remember: revenue and profit aren’t the be all and end all. What you need to be attentive to is cash. We’ll cover the difference between profit and cash when we talk about budgeting and cash flow forecasting in our next article.