In this video I'm going to tell you about some folks who've
thrown that strategic plan out the window and their business
has gone from 850k to just over $5.5m in that period of time.
Because good strategic planning normally leads to better decision making, better decision making, leads to better clarity and better clarity normally leads to better profitability.
But I'm going to tell you about some folks that I've worked with for the last six or so years, we've pretty much thrown that strategic plan out the window and their business has gone from 850k to just over five and a half million in that period of time. Let me tell you what they've done.
These folks are your typical New Zealand SME. When I first met them turnover was around about 850k, husband and wife owned the business and they might have had 10 or so people working with them at that stage.
And way back then 2016 we did a full business review, we set the strategic direction for the business and every year we have gone and set business plan, business objective, business milestones to work towards.
But on a day-to-day basis we've thrown that out the window and the one thing that we have really concentrated on is small improvements around implementation. Every time we meet and we meet once a month, every time we meet we're always looking how can we improve. What is it we can do?
We did things like review their sale price, we tweaked their GP, we looked at the CRM software that they were using, we looked at their customer experience, their follow-up process, we looked at how time was recorded, how supply chain was managed, how stock was managed, we looked at the financial reporting, we looked at their debtor days, we looked at their cash flows, we looked at their people plan, lots of small incremental improvements every time that they could then take away and physically implement.
So what did that mean to them? Well when I first met them sales were 860k they then went to $1.3m to $1.8m to $3m and we thought surely, we must be getting close to topping out now. That $3m went to $3.2m to $4.8m to $5.5m for the March 21 year and then year to date with four months to run they are at $4.5 million and not only have the sales increased, but the GP and the profitability has increased as well.
So a very simple question to ask yourself and your team, is what is it we can do to improve today? We're not looking for that big one thing that we can go and do, but it's lots of those small improvements and if you've seen me talk before I talk about the flywheel effect, one little thing done that moves the flywheel one piece and over and over time by all those improvements happening, we get more momentum.
So have a look at your business, talk to your team and say what is the one thing that we can do today, tomorrow, not next week or even next month, that's going to make a difference to us.
If you’d like to learn more about how small improvements can have a huge positive impact on your business, then contact Hutch at PlanA Consulting today on 021 748 142 or john@planaconsulting.co.nz
Regards, Hutch.
