Transcript Bite-Sized Business Plans ‘The way a team plays as a whole determines its success.

Bite-Sized Business Plans
‘The way a team plays as a whole determines its
success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual
stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the
club won't be worth a dime.’
Babe Ruth, American baseballer player known as
‘the greatest player in history’
This workshop
Like Formula One drivers who pull in for a pit-stop during a
Grand Prix race, Bite-Sized Business Plans is a workshop in
which your team takes time out from the business to work on
practical sales solutions to current business challenges.
The workshop includes:
 An analysis of your team’s current and past performance.
 Steps to create a one page action plan of goals and strategies to
enhance your business performance over the next twelve months.
Version xx. DD Month YYYY
The Benefits
The benefits to you in using this system are:
 Improve your individual and team results
 Increase your business profit.
 Lift motivation and morale.
 Become a stronger, more focused team.
Team Activity
Close your eyes and imagine the
days of the week
What colour is each day?
Write down the colour of each day.
Now compare your answers with the rest
of your team….……………………..
Understanding differences
The days of the week are a simple
fixed pattern. Yet we all see them
in different ways.
It is easy to imagine the potential for far
greater differences in the way we see more
complex situations - like our work, our
responsibilities and our relationships.
Human beings will never see things in
exactly the same way but we can
understand each other's views far better,
so that we can minimise conflict and
maximise cooperation.
Team Analysis
As a team, you are now going to use all those different
perspectives, to analyse your business.
On the following pages there are some questions.
Take five minutes to answer each one.
(There is space for each in your workbook).
When every team member has finished each answer, go
around the table and explain what you have written down
and why. Then move on to the next one.
Question:
What were your achievements
in the last twelve months?
For instance, did you achieve budgeted figures; exceed
them, set any personal bests, or maybe have some
team members do amazing things?
Take 5 minutes to write down everything you can think of,
that you felt was an achievement. Then read out your
answers around the table.
How did you rate?
Lots of achievements?
Great – you have a good base to build on
in the next twelve months.
Not many achievements?
No problem. The purpose of the workshop
is to create a plan so that you see some
improvement over the next 12 months.
Disappointments
Understanding and examining past disappointments is
a key to success. Otherwise we simply repeat the same
ones year after year.
We’ve all known someone who repeatedly goes out with the
wrong type of person, or is always having money troubles.
This is often because they don’t face their disappointments
head on and learn from them.
Disappointments or
Opportunities?
The Story of Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc was 54 and an outstanding salesperson, selling milk shake
machines. Someone invented an automatic milkshake machine that made the
product he was selling obsolete. This was a terrible disappointment to him.
Out of work, he wandered the streets and discovered two brothers who had a
super-fast system for making hamburgers.
He bought the concept from them and turned the idea into the most successful
small retail business in the world – starting McDonalds, at 54!
This story shows that disappointments can become your greatest opportunities.
Question:
What were your disappointments
in the last twelve months?
Take 5 minutes and put down everything you can think of.
This is your chance to purge them from the previous year.
Then go around the table and get each person to read out
their answers – don’t discuss them at this stage.
The Two Circles
Bestselling author Stephen Covey explains that everyone has a circle of
influence and a circle of concern.
Your circle of concern contains all the things you worry about in life but can’t do
anything about. Eg You might worry that people are dying in a war but there is
nothing you can change about this.
Your circle of influence contains all the things you can control.
Eg If you worry that you might be late for work, you could get up half an hour earlier.
Which Circle?
Now look at your list of disappointments.
Which circle does each one fit into?
If it belongs in your circle of concern, can you drag it into
your circle of influence by changing your actions. If not,
then just cross it off the list - there is no point wasting time
and energy thinking about it.
High achievers focus on their circle of influence, that is, on
what they CAN do to make a difference to their lives. By
focusing on goals and strategies within this circle, you will
have a much greater chance of success.
Learning
Learning new things is also important.
Knowledge x learning = effectiveness.
You can have all the knowledge in the
world but as soon as you stop learning
you stop being effective.
Results are simply a measure of improvement,
so when a team stops learning, they tend to
plateau in their achievements.
Question:
What have you learnt in the last twelve months?
What things have helped or hindered your performance?
Take 5 minutes and put down everything you can think of.
Then go around the table and get each person to read out their answers.
Limitations
Often the reason we haven’t enjoyed the success we might have wanted
is because we have been holding ourselves back in some way, which we
haven’t realised.
For instance, when Flight Centre, a large global travel agency, opened a new
operation in the UK the most commission a consultant could transfer in one
month was £4000. Eighteen months later they had improved all of their systems,
but consultants were still only transferring £4000 in commission. A high
performing consultant then arrived from Australia and in her first month she
transferred £8000 commission. In the following month eight UK consultants also
transferred over £8000 commission.
The only thing that had been restricting them was their own belief,
that this wasn’t possible.
Everyone Restricts
Themselves
We all restrict ourselves in some way and, like these
UK consultants, we often don’t recognise that we are
doing it.
The best way to identify our own limitations is to look at
where we are constantly disappointed.
Have a look back at your own team’s disappointments this
year and answer the following question……………………
Question:
In the last twelve months,
how did you restrict yourselves?
Take 5 minutes and put down everything you can think of.
Then go around the table and get each person to read out their answers.
Creating The Plan
You’ve now taken some time to assess your
team’s current and past performance. Now we’re
going to look at how you can improve these
results over the next twelve months.
First of all you need to set one or two goals……..
Goal-setting
People often confuse goals and strategies.
According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, a goal is:
The point marking the end of the race; object of effort or ambition.
A goal is how you measure the achievement
of all your strategies and improvements over the year.
Usually there would only be one or two of these, at the most.
Why do we set goals?
What you focus on is what you get!
A study began in 1953 of the Yale graduates of
that year. They found that only 3% had goals.
In 1973 those 3% were worth more than the
entire 97% of the rest of the class.
Smart Goals
Goals need to be smart with the following characteristics:
Specific: A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a
general goal. Compare the goal, "Get in shape“ with the more specific, "Join a
gym and workout 4 days a week."
Measurable: To determine if your goal is measurable, ask yourself, “How will I
know when it is accomplished?”
Achievable: You can achieve almost any goal you set as long as you plan your
steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps.
Realistic: To be realistic, you must be both willing and able to work towards your
goal. Your goal should be a real stretch for you - a high goal is frequently easier to
reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force.
Timelined: A goal should have a time-frame attached to it. For example, rather
than “I will lose 5 kilograms”, a timely goal would be Ï will lose 5 kilograms by 30
June.”
How Smart Are You Feeling?
How can you get ten horses into nine stables, one per stable?
The Answer
Example goals
Here are some examples of some successful goals:
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We break even by the end of the financial year.
We triple our number of clients this year.
We exceed our budgeted revenue by 20%.
This year we set new records for this store.
We are the highest performing team in the company in 2015.
The Team Goal
Now you need to decide on one or two good
goals for the next twelve months. What would
you like to achieve, as a business, that would
really excite you as a team?
Write this down as individuals and then compare and
discuss your answers, to come up with your final one
or two team goal/s.
Strategies
Once you have agreed on suitable team goals, the next step
in creating an effective business plan is to work out
strategies.
Strategies are the specific steps required to attain your goals.
Once again these should be SMART – specific, measurable,
achievable, realistic and time-lined.
Brainteaser
Before you start looking at your team’s sales
strategies let’s first sharpen your thinking with the
following brainteaser:
Polly Perkins was after a talking parrot, so she went to the
local pet shop in the hope of securing such a find. She was
in luck. The shop assistant assured her that the parrot
would learn and repeat any word or phrase it heard. Polly
was delighted. However, a week later, the parrot still
hadn't spoken a word. Polly returned to the shop to
complain, however, it appeared that the assistant was
accurate in what he had said, and refused a refund. Why
didn't the parrot talk?
The Answer
The parrot was deaf.
Therefore it couldn’t repeat a single word she said.
Simple, Simple, Simple!
Strategies do not have to be elaborate. Sales success is the result of
doing simple things in a consistent fashion.
For instance, compare these two business development managers:
BDM 1: Visits 100 clients. Asks for orders every time. Has a 50% conversion
rate. Gets 50 orders.
BDM 2: Visits 100 clients. Asks for orders half the time. Has a 70% conversion
rate. Gets 35 orders.
So even though BDM 2 had better sales skills and a higher conversion rate,
they received less orders, simply because they didn’t ask for them every time.
Example strategies
Here are some examples of successful strategies:
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We give every buying customer 3 business cards and ask them to pass
them on to friends and family.
We ask every customer if they are interested in our other products as
well.
We create a discount flyer for local retailers and drop it in to every
shop twice a year.
We give a bottle of wine to every customer who spends over $1000
with us.
We celebrate every time someone achieves a personal best.
Your Team Strategies
Now as individuals, write down the single
biggest things that you believe are going to
make a difference to your business
achieving its goals.
There should be a maximum of ten. Too many
steps is unrealistic and non-achievable.
Your total business goals and strategies should fit
on one page.
The Final List
Compare and discuss your
answers to create an agreed
list of team strategies for the
next twelve months.
The Whole Plan
Now write your whole team plan on the
planning page in your workbook.
Assigning Responsibility
Most strategies fail unless someone is tracking their
progress.
As a team, now work out who is going to be responsible
for tracking each strategy over the next twelve months.
For instance, one strategy might be ‘We double our
number of clients this year.’ This might be tracked by
Susan. Susan is not responsible for finding these new
clients. She is responsible for measuring monthly
progress; raising the strategy at meetings; and
brainstorming for solutions, if the strategy is not
progressing.
Roadblocks To Success
What are the roadblocks to this plan?
Now that you’ve worked out your plan, you need to
identify the potential obstacles to it?
What can you do to overcome these?
Commitment To The Plan
Many people come up with great plans
but the secret to success is committing to
it. As well as working out the plan you
need to work out a system of
commitment to the plan to make it truly
effective.
Here are some ideas……………………………….
Commitment Ideas
 Laminate the plan and give a copy to every team member – if a new team
member starts, give them a copy as well, and go through the plan so they are
on board with it.
 Diarise the plan: Each member of your team needs to diarise what they need to
do to make their strategy happen. Eg. ‘Get team to brainstorm ideas for getting
new clients at this week’s meeting.’
 Measure progress: Measure the progress of the plan at weekly and monthly
meetings.
 Reinforce the plan: Put a poster or other visual symbols of your goal and your
progress towards it, around your office. This can include, screensavers, mouse
pads, hats T-shirts etc.
Plus one more secret
ingredient…
There’s just one more
secret ingredient that will
ensure your team’s
success in achieving this
plan………
Celebration!!
Don’t forget to celebrate every step of your
improvement!
Copyright ©Mandy
Johnson 2007
Download more free business tools
at:www.mandyjohnson.co