Build Business Profits

The business performance goals you achieve for the next year begin today. In order to achieve business performance goals you must have ones defined.

If this seems perfectly obvious, then why is it that the majority of companies do not have an annual business plan detailed in financial performance terms. Hardly any business has the disciplined management system in place to manage the business to achieve financial performance benchmarks every week.

This is a summary action guide that should help your business performance excel :

1. Define the outcome twelve months from now that you expect. What are your targeted: revenue, profit and cash flow (takes into account investments in non cash assets). I recommend these goals be higher than your historical trend.

2. Define the business performance you need to achieve in the next two months by week to achieve your annual goal.

Steps 1 and 2 become the budget numbers for your business and step 2 is adjusted every week so you are always looking forward two months. Can be three but should not be less than two.

Part of Step 2 should be a cash flow projection. Again it is very important to have a budget for all these items including cash flow.

3. Once you develop your budgeted items then you track actual every week. Now you are in the position of addressing variances. Positive ones should be viewed as carefully as negative ones. You are either investing in more of what resulted in positive variances or address the cause of negative ones.

Since a CEO should be spending most of their time, meaning about 80% on marketing for growth, there needs to be a rationalized process in place where there is clear accountability for the operations in the other key areas of the business.

This process is a management system. If you are an international multi- billion dollar business or a single entrepreneur the principles are the same.

Sending you energy of health, happiness, prosperity

Steve Pohlit

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About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is a business owner and an expert business consultant focused on building profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing.  All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

If you are in a for profit business you must have a continual stream of customers that buy what you offer. If you don’t have that working nothing else matters. Given that, what is your priority?  Correct…Marketing!!

There are only three ways to increase revenue:

1. Sell more products or services to an existing customer

2. Sell the same amount of products or services to a customer at a higher price

3. Add more customers

When anyone visits your business that is traffic.  When anyone who visits buys your offer that is conversion.

Recently, article posted here have been highlighting social media marketing for business. That arena is increasingly being used to generate traffic. I have helped many companies implement marketing programs that use a combination of tools including: a blog, a website, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. These are all tools that work when used properly.

The landscape is changing with droves of people pouring into sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.  There are many people who claim to know why social media sites have become so popular but the reasons don’t matter. The facts are that there are huge numbers of people entering these sites and others like them for the first time each week.

Open up a Twitter account at Twitter.com and use the search feature at the bottom of the page and type in the keyword phrase social media.  Then begin to click on profiles and discover how many people are referring to themselves as a social media expert.

Key Point: If your primary intent is to do business, having a growing network of connected people on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter means nothing if they are not buying your offer. You have traffic but they are moving on by and the conversion piece of the formula is missing. So when someone calls themselves an expert ask them to show you the profitable business they have developed using social media. Don’t be surprised at the lack of response.

We started from scratch and developed two businesses that are profitable and cash flow positive using only social media. Social media we used  includes a blog for each business, and  a network we grew on several of the larger social media sites.

There was a lot of work involved in doing this. I know because I did a lot of it and so did my business partner.  Brian Campbell is the strategist on the detailed steps needed for this to work. Does this mean we are experts?  It means we really have a lot of skills, and now systems, for building meaningful market share in important niche markets.

My Top Two Recommendations for Businesses Wanting To Improve The Effectiveness of Their Marketing

1. Building a contact data base is key. Effectively communicate with that list. This is not new and remains a foundation principle. It is still an alien concept for most companies.

2. Have a find tuned marketing plan, budget and return on investment monitoring in place and reviewed weekly and for some actions, daily. All activity must be focused on building traffic and converting that traffic.

Closing Comments:

The social media landscape is hot and getting hotter. But there are also other proven business development tools including pay per click, email marketing, print media, electronic advertising, trade shows  and more. Each must be evaluated and tested in terms of benefit to your business. You can invest your time and that of your employees or outsource a lot of this. If you want fast results, outsource.  If you do, again migrate based on priorities and test.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit
The Profit Expert

Email Steve to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits.  Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing and Direct Response Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high.

Today another announcement regarding layoffs. This one in particular caught my attention for several reasons. First 7-Eleven’s press release disclosed it was cutting 10% of it’s non-store staff.  It also disclosed it was suspending certain benefit contributions and it’s incentive compensation program. 

Before continuing, please note I am not in any way associated with 7-Eleven. If I were the content would have been different. 

In general, anytime I read about infrastructure layoffs, the ones at the support level, or enterprise level as it it sometimes called, I question, how these positions were justified in the first place. Every support position should be essential for the business and in retail there is trememdous leverage. Consequently I wonder what management was thinking when they allowed staff to grow by 200 extra people.  

I wonder what percentage of the annual payroll cost was cut. That number is not necessarily and most likely not 10%. The operative question is what is 7-Eleven’s, or any company’s support structure cost target, as a percentage of projected related revenue?  The related question is how is that going to be calibrated given revenues that could very well be lower than projected?  At what point are support structure costs fixed given the size of the customer base? What is the strategy for increasing customer loyalty and revenue?

These and other related questions don’t seem to be answered in press releases or related public disclosures very well. They should be for public companies and any private companies where they are benefiting from community tax incentives while such insanity continues.

Now that I am warmed up, let’s look at the point on incentive compensation.  I don’t know how a company can take away a properly structured incentive compensation program. In fact, the reverse of this decision should be implemented. Nearly everyone in the business should be on a pay for perfomance program. Incentive compensaton should be the catalyst for …well profitable performance.  

In summary, the principle is you are in business to make a profit and and people who work in the business should be rewarded for their contribution to that profit performance. With some exceptions, everyone’s compensation can be tied to performance.  In my experience with hundreds of companies, this is a hot topic that gets nods of approval and gets dropped like a hot potato as soon as possible. Why is that? Everyone feels they want the guaranteed income. As we have seen… there are no guranatees.  

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit
www.StevePohlit.com
www.ManifestMastermind.com 

Network with me on Facebook: LinkedIn: Follow me on Twitter

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. Don’t miss my FREE Report: How To Make More Money With Your Business Now and Long Term

This report may be freely distributed without restrictions with the original content including this resource box remaining unchanged. Author: Steve Pohlit, Business Consulting Services, Executive Coaching, please visit www.stevepohlit.com

Major events offer an opportunity to capture traffic searching on the keywords for the event.  Caution: there needs to be  credible link to the event or you could develop negative goodwill with the campaign.

In this example the business is Manifest Mastermind which teaches the principles of focused intent, imaging results, using a mastermind group and in general all the principles of The Law of Attraction. 

The Law of Attraction’s popularity increased significantly with the release of the movie The Secret and the book by the same name.  

In this example, we were testing the idea of drawing the parallels to President Obama’s successful campaign and inauguration. We knew the inauguration would be a very popular search term. We choose YouTube video as the network for a short video clip. Our goal was to measure our opt ins during the two day test. The two days included the day of the inauguration and the day before. 

Our results exceeded our expectations with opt in rates more than double our projections for the test period. 

Manifest Mastermind is using video throughout the sales cycle and I highly recommend your business adopt this business building technique.

You are invited to experience Manifest Mastermind’s  free course 7 Steps To Manifesting Your Dreams. Click Here 

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit,
The Profit Expert
www.StevePohlit.com

Network with me on Facebook: LinkedIn: Follow me on Twitter

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. Don’t miss my FREE Report: How To Make More Money With Your Business Now and Long Term I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871

This report may be freely distributed without restrictions with the original content including this resource box remaining unchanged. Author: Steve Pohlit, Business Consulting Services, Executive Coaching, please visit www.stevepohlit.com

PS. My doors are open for new clients and referrals are well compensated.

How we feel about anything is a great barometer for prioritizing an action plan.  If you feel a major pain in your chest, the actionable options  and the time frame for implementation are generally clear. However, once we move past a life threatening emergency, we have a tendency to not move as purposely.

Why is it that we often take a “let’s see what happens” approach?  Actually there are many reasons. We rely on the news to tell us how we are doing. Currently the news reports the US is in a recession so we decide to accept that and feel bad.  We also decide to live in fear.  We fear lost sales and profits, we fear losing our business or our jobs and more.  This feeling bad or feeling negative state results in us being “off our game”.  Life a professional athlete, we don’t perform to our potential.

There a many companies in a hiring freeze and  have indefinitely suspended pay increases even when they are deserved by a star person’s performance.  The valued employees in place are asked to do more for the same or less pay.  Businesses scale back on marketing programs, investments in technology and in general any spending that seemingly hurts short term cash flow and earnings.

All of these actions and more have a direct negative impact on long term results. When the news tells us things are getting better and we decide to be back “on our game”, we find valuable employees leaving for a better place to work, we find competitors who have become stronger rather than weaker while we were holding back and we find a shortage of excellent outside talent to help us with projects that are now coming out of hibernation.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If you are younger than 25 it may not. But if you are under 25 pay attention and maybe it will be you who will learn from the current economic experiences.  Maybe it will be you who decides there is no law for us ever to be in an economic downturn. There is no  law that requires us to feel bad or be angry about anything.

We have an opportunity at the start of each day to move forward or stagnate and eventually fade away. I suggest you decide right now to move your business forward.

The Top 5 Action Steps For Moving Your Business Forward Starting Today
1. Decide what revenue and profit before tax you want to report for the year ended twelve months from today.
2. Roll those numbers back to what you want to report one month from now and for each subsequent month for this next year. (It makes no difference when you are starting this. Use the twelve month horizon right now.)
3. For the next two months, roll the revenue and profits number back to what your business needs to do each week starting this week to hit your monthly target.
4. Translate your two month weekly and monthly targets into specific action plans with assigned accountability.
5. Measure actual vs. planned performance with close attention to your actual vs. planned cash position. Support and hold people accountable for performance.

Taking purposeful action is the key to moving forward. The alternative is to sit back read the news to find out how good or bad you feel.  Your choice.  (If you would like to discuss these steps and how I have helped companies effectively implement these for long term business performance improvement, contact me at 727-587-7871.)

Sending all my readers the energy of wellness, peace and abundance.

Steve Pohlit http://www.stevereports.com

Network with me on Facebook: LinkedIn: MySpace: Follow me on Twitter

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Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. Don’t miss my FREE Report: How To Make More Money With Your Business Now and Long Term I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool (best tool ever for helping you manifest your goals and dreams) is The Prosperity Tool Chest and guiding articles posted very often at Prosperity Tip