Business Management - Sales

Business management needs to focus on sales and financial control. Marketing and sales ranges from identifying
target markets and customers to techniques for closing the sale. Key problems are little or no:

 Marketing or creating brand awareness

 Differentiation of marketing channels [web presence, email, brochure, radio, TV, newspaper, magazines…]
 Consideration of sales channels [web, telephone, in-person, retail, licensing to third-party…]
 Management measures associated with markets, target customers, contact management, sales, repeat sales
 Consideration of what demographic information should be captured to identify new customers or channels

Business Management – Financial Control

To make money requires good financial management and to ensure that the business considers the financial impact
of decisions. Poor financial management is:

 Little or no financial forecasting and planning

 Lack of consideration of expenses in relation to income – spending too much money
 Insufficient profit margin
 Little or no consideration of cashflow; when money actually comes in and when money actually goes out
 Growth is paid for with debt and servicing the debt becomes an excessive burden

Organisation - Policies

Business must comply with all applicable laws including company, health and safety, employment, taxation and
have appropriate company policies. Key problems are likely to be no policies and/or contracts for:

Read on 

 Use Balanced Scorecard and Build Alignment

 Use Strategy Maps with the Balanced Scorecard
 SWOT Analysis Helps Strategic Plan Development

 Customers
 Suppliers
 Staff, contractors or temporary staff

Organisation - Staff

If problems exist here then staff management is likely to be haphazard at best and abysmal at worst:

 Setting either unclear objectives or no objectives; what is expected and by when and inconsistent follow
through
 Setting either unclear or no expectations about the quality of the deliverables and the level of detail
required
 Changing the completion criteria before completion of tasks
 Micro management of tasks
 Lack of timely guidance and course correction for complex tasks
 Inconsistent behaviour, too friendly, too strict, too generous, too mean
 Perceived or real inequality in treatment of staff, with impulsive or reactive decision-making
 Unclear or no procedures in place to address recruitment, staff discipline or performance problems
  Staff specialist knowledge leaves business vulnerable to staff being unavailable [holiday, sick…] or leaving
and the business struggling to fill the gap

Other Reasons for Business Problems

The reasons for business problems are not simply restricted to the above list of internal items but also extend to
external factors such as:

 Natural disaster
 Significant economic downturn
 Bigger, better or faster competitors
 New business entrant changing the rules of the game
 Products or services becoming obsolete

Read more at Suite101: Identify Common Business Problems: Poor Leadership, Business Management Issues, Weak
Strategic Planning http://www.suite101.com/content/identify-common-business-problems-a82328#ixzz1J6HEFmlO

Problem solving and decision-making are important skills for business and life. Problem-solving often involves
decision-making, and decision-making is especially important for management and leadership. There are processes
and techniques to improve decision-making and the quality of decisions. Decision-making is more natural to
certain personalities, so these people should focus more on improving the quality of their decisions.

hen we have a problem in life or in business, we often rush to solve it, without considering the possible causes. 
While the cause of a problem may seem obvious, it is often more complicated or hidden than you might think. 
Many variables and factors affect business processes and relationships.  These factors may not be readily apparent
unless you sit down and objectively solve the problem using proven problem solving techniques.  For the purpose of
this article, we will use a business assumption but remember you can use this process on any problem you have to
get a clear picture of the real causes and the possible solutions:

Step 1:  Define the Problem – this sounds a little silly, but you have to put words around the problem to get it clear
in your head.  Especially if you are working on a team or with a group of people, you should all agree on what the
problem is.  Don’t be vague in your definition – be specific.  Don’t say things like “We’re not making enough
money”.  The more specific you are in defining the problem, the easier it will be to get to the root cause of that
problem and find solutions.  So, if you aren’t making enough money, think about why that is a problem.  Is the
money shortage affecting your ability to hire staff or to buy supplies to make your product?  WHY is the amount of
money you have not sufficient?  Let’s say that you want to grow your business and your current profit will not allow
you to do that.  OK.  Your problem statement might be something like “We are unable to grow our business with our
current profit”.

Step 2:  Analyze the Problem – In order to solve your problem you really need to know who you have to satisfy. 
Who is your REAL customer?  Not your manager, maybe not even the end-user of the product.  Maybe your real
customer is the retailer who must recognize the value of your product and know it is worth buying.  THEY will
figure that out by understanding what THEIR customers need and want.  Identify your customer and document their
requirements.  What do they need?  Inexpensive products or products with more features?  What kinds of features? 
If your problem is that your sales are not robust enough for your business to grow, you need to understand how to
make more money so you need to understand your customer.  Are you even serving the right customer or should you
be selling to someone else whose needs are met by your current product?
Step 3:  Identify Possible Solutions – For this step, don’t narrow your set of answers too quickly.  First, you’ll
want to brainstorm.  Come up with wild, creative ideas and think out of the box.  Throw out all assumptions on how
you might make more profit so you can grow your business.  You can get rid of the bad ideas later.  Have fun with
this step.  The more ideas the better!

Step 4:  Select Solutions – Now you want to select the best solution.  Start by narrowing your solution set down to
the best two or three.  Then run through some test questions to be sure each of these solutions will solve your
problem.  If you end up with more than one good solution, save all of them.  If you are presenting solutions to your
management for approval, you’ll want to save your best solution for last, but present all of the possible solutions for
their consideration.

Talk about why each is good and what the tradeoffs might be and then give them your recommendation.  They will
be impressed with the homework your team has done and, even if they select one of the solutions that is not your
recommended answer, you will know that you’ve considered all the tradeoffs and that the solution is likely to solve
your problem.  To cull out the bad solutions from the smaller set, ask yourself these questions:

How will this solution solve the problem?  Does it solve the entire problem or just part of it?  Has this been tried
before?  If so, and it did not work, why did it not work?  If it did work, why was the process abandoned?  Are you
likely to get resistance from your management, customer or others with this solution?  Do you need to phase in this
solution if it is radical?

Once you find the solution(s) you want to advance, you’ll need to do the following:

 Identify the Output from the Solution – Is it a new product, a new sales process flow for your sales staff, a
new report, a new training manual.

 Identify Your Specifications - features, security, required skills to do the job, standards.

 Identify all the Steps in the Work Process - Wow will get from the input e.g., a sales lead, to the output -
the product delivered to the customer.  Don’t leave any steps to chance.  And remember to include decision
points (any step where the process may get stalled or you may lose time because a person or side process
must be followed in order to get a decision and move forward)

 Identify Measurements - You have to be able to measure your results in order to know whether you have
been successful in solving your problem.  Things like “product returns reduced by 40%”, “Third quarter
sales orders of at least $500,000” are specific enough to keep you on track toward your goal. 

 Determine Process Capability – Can the steps in your process and the flow of that process get you where
you need to go by the time you need to be there?  Will it achieve the results you need? 

 Evaluate Results - The final steps involve monitoring.  Once you get approval to implement your problem
solution, you will monitor and evaluate the results.  The team will review the results, looking again at
process capability, measurements and other factors, to decide if they have to change or edit any procedures
or if they have to go back to the drawing board. 

 Recycle – Back to the drawing board, if appropriate.  Start the process again and see where you failed to
consider an issue, what details you omitted, and what new information you may now have to consider to
solve this problem.