Leverage Your Business to Build Your Business

April 13, 2009 by

Leverage means doing more with less. Understanding this concept means learning how to build an efficient business model that relies on others to do the work.

Ohio business coach, Ralph Berge tells his clients that in order to move your company forward, it is critical that you start delegating routine tasks to wage earners so you can start focusing on the top-line activities that will drive revenues and add to the overall growth of your company.

If you delegate without proper planning or a system, the entire process becomes self-defeating. Delegation turns into abdication.

So where and how do you begin this process? Business owners need to focus on team building learning that strengthens the entire team to understand and implement the owner’s action plan. When they get it they can do it…when they can do, the owner has time to focus “on” other important business building aspects of the business.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: ,

Build Long-term Stability and Survival Into Your Business

April 10, 2009 by

Successful business owners share many admirable qualities. They are smart, hard-working, and focused. Despite the hard work factor, Dun & Bradstreet reports that only nine percent of small businesses, with fewer than twenty employees, survive for ten years.  

Running a small business takes an inordinate amount of time and energy, which often leaves owners too distracted to focus on other areas of their lives, which causes many family business problems. When a business is a key component of family wealth, however, it is critical to incorporate family business planning to secure its long-term stability. After all, for most business owners, the business represents their single most valuable asset. Taking steps to safeguard a business can help ensure its long-term survival and success and protect an asset that often represents a life’s work. 

Invest your time in building your business by talking with Ralph Berge, Cleveland business coach about family business planning.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: , ,

How to Exit Your Business?

April 8, 2009 by

Begin with the end in mind…in other words; plan a graceful (and profitable) exit from the start. Family business succession planning is an often overlooked, but extremely important part of any businesses’ plan. This step of your business plan outlines your exit strategy. It may seem strange to develop an “up-front” strategy to leave your business, but potential investors want to know your long-term plans. Your exit plans need to be clear in not just in your own mind, but in a written document because they will dictate how you operate the company. For example, if you plan to get listed on the stock exchange, you’ll want to follow certain accounting regulations from day one. If you plan to pass the business to your children, you’ll need to start training them at a certain point.

Here’s a look at some of the available strategies for entrepreneurs and businesses for sale in Ohio:

Potential Exit Strategies for your business plan:

Merge: Sometimes, two businesses can create more value as one company. If you believe such an opportunity exists for your firm, then a merger may be your ticket to exit. If you’re looking to leave entirely, then the merger would likely call for the head of the other involved company to stay on. If you don’t want to relinquish all involvement, consider staying on in an advisory role.

Be acquired: Other companies might want to acquire your business and keep its value for themselves. Make sure the offered sale price meshes with your business valuation. You may even seek to cultivate potential acquirers by courting companies you think would benefit from such a deal. If you choose your acquirer wisely, the value of your business can far exceed what you might otherwise earn in a sale.

Sell: Selling outright can also allow for an easy exit. If you wish, you can take the money from the sale and sever yourself from the company. You may also negotiate for equity in the buying company, allowing you to earn dividends afterwards — it clearly is in your interest to ensure your firm is a good fit for the buyer and therefore more likely to prosper.

 Talk to Ohio Business Coach, Ralph Berge about planning to exit your business

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: ,

Play Above the Line at all Times!

April 6, 2009 by

The most common challenge that arises in executive business coaching relationships is the program going off the rails because of unhelpful mental attitudes. It is for this reason that the issue is raised even before we get started.

Both the business business coach and the client must commit to the coaching process and will have to work as a team to ensure that goals are established and realized. There is one important rule that we must both comply with:

 

Play above the line at all times!

 

Above the line, you own the ship and have an OAR to steer it.  Below the line, you make your BED and you must lie in it.  By playing above the line, we take ownership of what is happening around us and accept the responsibility and accountability that goes with it.

 

When something goes wrong, the easiest thing to do is to blame it on somebody else, find an excuse or deny that there is a problem.  This ‘playing below the line’ is destructive, as it does not resolve anything and problems get worse.  This type of reaction is typical of the victim mentality – failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy for people who think like this.

 

Playing above the line is constructive because taking ownership of, and responsibility for, challenges leads to the resolution of problems. It also ensures that they don’t happen again.  This pro-active approach is typical of people with a victor mentality.  Team members need to commit to playing above the line at all times.

 

It’s Victor Mentality or Victim Mentality. Always play Above the Line…be a Victor.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With:

Be SMART About Goal Setting for Business

April 3, 2009 by

Goal setting for a business is as important as setting goals in personal life. The common denominator in all the self-help literature and books is the importance of goal setting. We’re told to set long-term goals, short-term goals, lifetime goals and personal goals. Often it isn’t easy.

 

There are many reasons why we don’t achieve our goals. Sometimes the goals we set are unrealistic. New Year’s resolutions are typical examples. Suddenly, we expect to change the way we eat, or the way we exercise just because the calendar changes. It’s like expecting a child that’s never ridden a bike to suddenly jump on and go, or to run a marathon without months of training. These goals are based on illusion with little regard to natural growth. You must be able to crawl before you walk.

 

So, how do we set and achieve goals for a business? Stephen R. Covey says it best in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”

 

Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals is vital to being successful in the goal setting process. The benefits of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results orientated, Time-framed (S.M.A.R.T) goals have been written about in self-help books for years. So, it follows that goal setting is obviously a powerful process.

 

Ralph Berge, a business coach says It is about ‘eating the elephant, one bite at a time’ and of turning vision into achievable, actionable things. It’s the common denominator of successful individuals and businesses.

 

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With:

5 Ways to Leverage Your Business

April 1, 2009 by

Business Coach, Ralph Berge, an Akron business coach tells clients and prospects that 5 Ways to Super Profits is the fastest way to improve business sales and increase profits because of one concept:  Leverage, or as we define it; “ever more with ever less.”

 

If you are like most business owners, you want more: more customers, more revenues, or more profits. The problem is all three of these factors are end results, not what really drive your business. Business Coach’s 5 Ways refers to the 5 areas that drive your profits:

·         Leads … improving and measuring lead generation … and how to leverage any you use now …

·         Conversion Rate … developing sales skills from training your team right through developing strategies will give your sales process a massive boost …

·         Number of Transactions … often the most overlooked and yet most productive ways to increase revenues …

·         Average Dollar Sale … once again probably the easiest to impact and yet so easily overlooked, here we will work with you to increase the value of every transaction …

·         And Profit Margins … strategies to boost your bottom line … impacting both you and your Cash flow …

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: ,

Build a Great Company…Invest in Your Team

March 30, 2009 by

Ralph Berge is an Ohio Business Coach who helps build effective corporate teams. Corporate team building training is used to create rapidly changing conditions that require strategic thinking and imaginative problem solving.  Corporate team building training can be used to effectively enhance both teams and management in many ways including:

·         Building team trust

·         Improving communication

·         Developing strategic business planning to manage change

·         Teaching team member to think smarter and improve worker productivity

·         Managing change and help the team to accept change in the workplace

The “right” team is a businesses most valuable asset. An investment in corporate team building training has a high ROI. Regular training team training is essential.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: ,

Effective Planning Helps to Navigate in Difficult Times

March 27, 2009 by

The strategic business plan explores key questions about the purpose for being in business. On a regular basis business owners and their teams must answer these questions and agree on the answers. The answers will help in determine the essential elements of the strategic plan. From a business strategy consulting standpoint, the key, broad subjects to be incorporated in a strategic business plan are:

   Vision

   Mission Statement

   Key Objectives

   Milestones

   Implementation/ action plan and time table

 

This plan, which includes strategies, actions and responsibilities, becomes the foundation of the firm’s strategic business plan. This is not a document to be completed and left in the desk drawer. It is to be shared with the team and developed into 90 day plans fro the management and team to implement.  

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: ,

Build an Effective Team in your Business

March 25, 2009 by

To build highly-effective teams you have to create an atmosphere for it to happen. Ralph Berge a Cleveland Business Coach who provides executive team building suggests, “We must create an environment where each team member feels free to express their concerns with no retribution.” Business owners and management must understand that no idea is wrong. Team building coaching dictates that every team members’ suggestion needs to be considered and, if possible, built upon.

Remember we learn from mistakes and teams must be given an opportunity to try new ideas without admonishment for mistakes. Instead, a failure should be an opportunity to gain knowledge and to praise any safe-guards which were included in the plan. Give me a call for more on executive team building and team building coaching.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: , ,

Exiting Your Business

March 25, 2009 by

What can exiting from your business mean to you? It can be as emotionally difficult as a bankruptcy or forced liquidation or it can be a planned sale with all debts paid, money for retirement and peace of mind. Planning for succession means you should plan to sell when the sale will provide the funds necessary to retire or move on to a new opportunity. It can also be passed on to your heirs, employees or partners with proper pre-planning to fund the sale.

Ralph Berge is a Cleveland Business Coach who helps business owners with succession management. Succession management is an exit strategy that simply means you have planned your transition and you are ready to take advantage of the options available to you. Call Ralph Berge, Business Coach 440-838-0991 to get moving on your business exit strategy.

Filed Under: coaching Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »