Business Success takes Team Effort and Great Leadership

How clear are your goals?  Have written down where you want the business to be in 3 years, or even 5 years from now?  For many business owners, the “plan” for next year is simply to scale up on what seemed to work well this year, scaling back on the things that were not working well.   Sensible, of course.  However, if you are ambitious, this will not take you on a path to maximize the business success, maximize your income from the business, and maximize the business valuation.

Perhaps you carry out regular SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analyses.  However, often these analyses are more focused on showing progress and are not on the changing “bigger picture”–how today’s situations and actions will enable the achievement of the overall business vision.  

Your Business Assessment starts with an audit of where the company is today.  Including the current valuation of the business.  Unfortunately, business owners are often disappointed when they discover the current valuation. However, if you don’t have a clear understanding of the business’ valuation today, how are you going to determine the actions you need to take to achieve the valuation you seek?

Yes, you’re tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).  But which KPIs?  Often, the KPIs that are being tracked “magically” show consistent improvements, as “what gets measured, improves”.  However, are you measuring the critical KPIs that are your progress to achieving your strategic goals.  The changes in your available markets and the quality of your response to these new opportunities…and threats?  

The Business Assessment will provide you with a new companywide consensus.  It is an insightful review of where you really are today, a revised SWOT Analysis, and a compelling review of the actions that you and your team have considered, and some realistic goals for the next 24 months.  

Following the Business Assessment, you will have an Action Plan.  It’s yours.  You’re free to choose whether to work with your existing team, or whether to work with a coach to help accelerate your progress.   

If your business is already achieving $10 million in sales with profit levels on par for your industry, you may be well on the pathway to creating “generational wealth”.  However, even businesses that are generating significant revenues may not have the systems in place, the management team integration, the shared commitment to the business vision, necessary to drive sustained revenue and profit growth–and dramatic valuation growth.  

How ambitious is your dream?  Before we start working together, we will complete an assessment of where the business is today, including a realistic valuation. Once we know where the business is today, we can work together to determine the steps that need to be taken to achieve your goal.    

Although revenues are important, they are only one component in determining business valuation.  Indeed, some businesses generating $2 million a year are more valuable than businesses generating $10 million or more.  Every One-on-One Coaching client is achieving a significant increase in revenue, profitability and valuation (3X to 10X).

What if your ambition is a touch less ambitious?  Perhaps, to start, you determine that the Mastermind Membership program meets your needs–you will still have access to the education tools, coaching (in a group setting), and business communities–and you will achieve significant revenue, profit, and valuation growth.

All businesses—whether start-ups or $multi-million enterprises–need skilled sales teams. Our Sales Mastery program is an incredible deal–costing just $1,200 per salesperson for the 12-week program. And we guarantee that you will generate substantially more than that in additional sales–or it’s free.  In other words, it is a totally compelling investment.

For start-ups, we offer some free mentorship. 

We also have special programs for “early stage” businesses.  Evolving from start-up means you’ve tested and verified your idea, and you are now in the process of determining what it is that distinguishes you as being “the best”–refining the buyers’ value proposition.

The most ambitious Early Stage clients may choose One-on-One Coaching–especially if speed of execution is critical and raising money from Angel investors or Venture Capitalists is important.  If the ideas are going to take longer to test and validate, the early stage business leaders may choose to join the Mastermind Membership programs—where they’ll still receive great coaching and peer group support but at a lower intensity than with One-on-One coaching.  

At ActionCoach of the Triangle, we are passionate about small businesses.  I am a serial entrepreneur; I’ve built 6 businesses from scratch, both bootstrapped and by raising venture funds (over $40 million) and achieved exits of over $200 million.  So, as well as being a certified business and executive coach, I have a wealth of experience to guide you through the process. We work with you as you test and verify the strengths of your offerings, and establish a strong foundation upon which to grow.  We work with you as you refine your business plan and sales/marketing strategy.  We work with you as you execute those strategies. We work with our clients as they raise new funds, whether grants, SBA loans, other loans, or investments.

Our coaching fees are surprisingly affordable. Generally, those fees will grow as your business grows, as you build your team, as you extend your business systems, as you scope out and execute your growth strategy.

Most business owners are disappointed when they first discover the valuation of their business–even businesses that are generating very attractive incomes for the owners.  The challenge is that much of the value is wrapped up in the skills and sweat equity that the owner is putting in each and every day–value that doesn’t easily transfer to a purchaser.  

The process of increasing the business valuation is strongly linked with the process of moving away from the owners’ day-to-day immersion in working “in” the business.  As the owners build the systems and teams, they move to investing a majority of their time focused on evolving the business strategy and the developing the teams that are now responsible for the day-to-day business operations.

This means that as you implement your learnings from coaching, you inevitably increase the valuation of your business, and–happily–improve the quality of your life.

There are some other important reasons to increase the value of your business.  Do you have a succession plan?  If–for any reason–you want to pass ownership of the business, whether to a family member or in a sale, you will want to ensure that you have gotten the business into a condition where the new owner can continue and build upon the strategic direction of the business–without having to revert to working “in” the business.  Since the new owner wants to acquire the quality of life that you have created, your business has now achieved the significant valuation of your dreams!  Perhaps you are open to receiving a strategic investment–diversifying your investments and risks (or simply to enjoy some of the wealth that the business has generated!), or you want to leverage the value of your business to fund a strategic investment of your own.  The list is endless…

Almost every business and business leader can benefit from a business coach.  Athletes benefit from coaching if they have core strengths and are willing to follow the coach’s guidance.  Similarly, business leaders must be able to leverage their core strengths and be willing to follow-through on their agreed-upon commitments to themselves and their business. So, before choosing a coach, decide whether you are ready to commit–are you willing to do the homework and to make those changes?

If a business has limited funding and is not generating sufficient revenue and margin to be cashflow positive, it may be tough to find the funds to pay for coaching.  We are willing to work with you to find out whether there are immediate expense reduction opportunities, revenue and margin growth opportunities, and/or new sources of funding.  However, if none of those opportunities exist, either pass on coaching or sign up for our least expensive program and we’ll work with you to find your viable path forward.

Before choosing the coach you are going to work with, have a “test drive”.  This is a mutual opportunity to get to know each other, to discuss the most pressing priorities, and work with your coach to agree the tactics that will bring-about the desired results, quickly.  The relationship between the coach and client is likely to be long term, so each will want to be inspired and enjoy the “working together chemistry”.

We have a limited number of opportunities to add One-to-One clients; it may be necessary to start with Mastermind Membership and graduate to One-on-One as an opening becomes available.

Unlike many sales courses that attempt to cram all the learning into one or two days, the Sales Mastery Program is a carefully developed 12-week course.  Each one hour session (with additional time available for any participants with specific needs) starts with a review of the lessons learnt from the previous week–successes and challenges–and strategies to learn from each.

We then progress to this week’s subject–including a video which is available to class members ahead of the meeting.  We review the video and discuss the critical issues–reinforcing the key points in interactive discussions, ensuring that the lessons are connected with each participant’s experiences–serving to further enrich the learning experience. 

We then set weekly goal–the homework–to further embed the learnings and in preparation for the next week’s meeting.

As we progress through the course, each of the participants will demonstrate how the lessons learned are having a measurable impact on their sales success.

Whatever the program, we guarantee that you will achieve greater success out of participating than your investment.  For coaching, we will agree certain goals.  If those goals are not being achieved within 17 weeks, we will work with you for free until those goals are accomplished.  In our Sales Mastery program, we guarantee that, provided the participant completes the course, that participant will generate more additional revenue than the $1,200 investment.  In other words, we guarantee success.

You can always dial in from wherever you are; there will be leaders joining from around the world. That’s a reality and we want to accommodate it. You don’t need to be camera-ready to participate in these live sessions. If you’re 100% sure that you’ll miss out on a session, just let us know ahead of time and submit any questions you have. All the live sessions are recorded. Once recorded, they’re uploaded to your learning platform, Dojo, where you can find and revisit them at any time.

So if there are sessions you can’t make, you can always watch the recording and then ask questions and get involved via the forums.

Those who purchase single and team packages will have unlimited access to all course materials, including live sessions recordings for 12 months.