Articles by Kerry Anne Nelson

Those on the hunt for a business investment are savvy. They will only invest in a bargain that suits their current situation and has the ability to expand their business success. The process of selling a business can be extremely difficult. When I embarked on this journey for the first time I had absolutely no idea just how arduous it would be. I didn’t realise how long it would all take and I certainly hadn’t considered what would be required to make my business attractive to a buyer. When I started the process I naively thought that all I needed was profitability. After a year of working at that sale, I learned a few lessons that just might make the world of difference to you as you prepare to take your business to market.  There was a time in the middle of preparing for the sale where I had to push through the fear that I may not make it. It was a roller coaster ride that was fraught with risky unknowns. I know now that my worries were actually founded in fact. Only 20% of all of the businesses listed for sale ever sell.  Those on the hunt for a business investment are savvy. They will only invest in a bargain that suits their current situation and has the ability to expand their business success. The health of your bottom line will certainly make your business more attractive, but this is only one factor your potential buyers will use to evaluate the opportunity you are presenting. Along with a profitable sales history, your buyer needs a truckload of certainty. It is essential that these five key areas ooze stability if you want to sell your business for what it’s truly worth:  Staffing If you can demonstrate that your staff work well with or without you there, you will be in a strong selling position. There is not a single business buyer in the world who wants to inherit a chaotic, negative workforce. A team of reliable, competent people running a tight ship is a compelling asset for any business purchase. Well established systems for recruitment, onboarding, training, management and offboarding are even more attractive again. Suppliers Knowing the business has clean, clear lines of supply for stock and other essential resources is vital to a successful sale. You must be on good terms with all of your suppliers. You need to be able to show you have watertight processes for managing accounts, and for purchasing and receiving supplies. When you present your business to your prospect, assure them that your company has easy access to quality supplies at great prices, and that there’s no risk of this changing in the foreseeable future. Operations You will be ready to show off the value of your business asset when you can walk your prospect through well-maintained operations manuals which document how everything is done. From your workflows to your website, to your marketing, service delivery, site management, and administration… every part of a saleable business must run like a well-oiled machine. This is the proof that the cogs of your business machine can and will keep turning long after you have left the engine room.   Goodwill Maximising the strength of your business reputation is an effective way to boost the final sale price. The value of your business brand name, solid customer base, good customer relations, good employee relations, and any patents or proprietary technology will all hold you in good stead with your buyers as long as they are rock solid. Success in this area cannot be achieved overnight. If you are thinking of selling up in future, you need to invest in building the goodwill of your business over the long term. Handover Your business will be irresistible to buyers if you show them you are ready to roll out the red carpet to welcome them. Map out a clear timeline of how you will hand the business over. Include an overview of the steps you have prepared to make it easy for them to take the reins. A successful handover is a natural extension of quality business leadership. Building effective systems to manage your staff, suppliers and operations will enhance the goodwill of your business and set you up for a silky smooth handover. For more information go to http://www.operationverve.com

Building a business can be a tough gig, but working for your business owning boss when they’re at their wits end is no walk in the park either. The pressures facing entrepreneurs are widely known but sitting behind the owner’s stress, exhaustion and burnout are the staff doing their best to hold it together. Yes, the average entrepreneur spends nearly 70% of their time running a management hamster wheel. Yes, it’s a time consuming race that has a quarter of them working over 50 hours per week. But if the business owner is stretched too thin, chances are their staff are coming to the end of themselves too.  Staff miss out on training  It’s exhausting for business owners to chase their staff around to fix their mistakes. It’s frustrating for them to watch their team wasting precious time because they can’t find what they need. And it can be infuriating to realise that no matter how many times you show them, they still don’t know what to do.  Even though research shows employees want to be trained, business owners in survival mode typically abandon the training and development their staff need to create business stability. Employees want to work more effectively, develop new skills, and advance their own careers. If they don’t get it, research shows 40% will leave the company altogether. If you employ millennials, 87% say they will jump ship if staying with you means missing out on professional development and career growth. Proactive business leaders make staff training a priority. They see the learning opportunity in every mistake and they champion the development of their staff as the best way to grow the business. Staff can feel unappreciated When you have been tied night and day to the work of growing your business it can be difficult to pop your head up out of the trenches to check in with your team. 30% of business owners report struggling with depression, and 50% of those deteriorate through to full burnout. Reaching out to care for your team is undeniably difficult when you can barely string five minutes together to care for yourself.  It is easy to take your staff for granted, but when employees don’t feel valued or rewarded by their employer, they are likely to leave. 79% of employees who quit cite lack of appreciation as their reason for leaving, but with proper rewards and acknowledgement 90% of employees report feeling like their work really makes a difference.  Strategic business owners invest just a few moments each day into acknowledging their staff and the contributions they make towards lasting business expansion.   Staff will cost too much While your staff have the potential to be your greatest business asset, employees who miss out on the training and TLC they need can become a costly expense in any business. For every thousand employees, ineffective training costs businesses $13.5 million each year in poor customer care, reduced performance, and wasted resources. If a disgruntled employee leaves, replacing them will have the business owner spending half of their annual salary to find and train their replacement.    The problem is that many business owners see training as a short term expense rather than an investment in the long game. Companies that invest in employee training have 24% higher profit margins than those that don’t, and they enjoy 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalised training. Business owners burning the candle at both ends in pursuit of growth will do well to remember that being the champion of their staff will accelerate the achievement of their aims. To develop a proactive leadership plan for your business, go to http://www.operationverve.com

The job market is not like it used to be. The people on both sides of the table know that business owners need their staff more than the staff need their employer, and if they plan to sell up, they need the loyalty, reliability and efficiency of their staff more than ever. The power game is up for the boss. We are in a seeker’s market. I spoke with a business owner recently who is passionately invested into the goal of building his very successful creative design business into a cookie cutter franchise model. He says he plans to duplicate that model across multiple stores to create a saleable asset. He’s in the early stages of his journey, and on this day he was lamenting the frustrations of recruiting his first hire. “They come into the interview and ask what I will offer them! As if I owe them something!” The stats around employee motivation and expectation act as a challenging mandate for business owners. A 2018 study by Axonify showed that over 85% of employees not only want training to advance their own career, but they want it to be fun, personalised, easy to understand, delivered on paid time, at a time they choose. As real human beings with feelings and pride, employees also want acknowledgement, recognition and reward. Octanner tells us that 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving. 69% of the participants in that particular study reported not having been recognised even once that year. No wonder 85% of employees are disengaged at work! In a 2016 Reventure study on the Australian Workplace, half of workers admitted that “some days of work don’t really get my maximum effort.” Guthrie Jensen tells us that 74% of employees feel they aren’t reaching their potential at work. This is an expensive problem. 40% of workers say they will leave their employer in the first twelve months if they do not receive adequate training to do their work, which costs Australian businesses $33 billion annually. Workplace disengagement across the board costs over $500 billion each year. The last thing you want if you are working a plan to sell your business is to have unpredictable, disengaged staff manning the fort. Long-time business mentor and exit strategist Denise Hall, affectionately known as “The Entrepreneurial Mother”, says most business owners leave their run too late when it comes to adequately preparing for the sale of their business. “The actual sale process should take anywhere between 3-9 months. But you’ve got work to do first to get the asking price up. From a salability perspective, your staff need to have the expertise to transition the business from your ownership to the next party. They need to be able to replace you entirely.” Business owners who break the statistical mould prepare their business for sale well in advance on the strength of their staff training and development programs. This is about more than boasting the competence and productivity of your current workers. Building a saleable asset relies on the creation of robust staffing processes. Effective systems for training, management and promotion attract high quality candidates, empower them to perform well when they’re hired, and make them reluctant to leave. Furthermore, a business asset is only truly ready for sale if it can be demonstrated that even in the face of staff departure, it is guaranteed that the business show can and will go on. Benjamin Franklin once said “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest” yet gaping holes in workplace training abound. Axonify’s study shows that one third of employees receive zero training, and 43% of those who are trained say that training was ineffective. A recent study by CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training at all. To be fair, the vast majority of businesses do offer staff training in one form or another, but effectiveness is the key to building a saleable business. A 2017 ReportLinker study revealed 83% of employees with opportunities to take on new challenges say they’re more likely to stay with the organisation. Companies that offer comprehensive training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalized training. But it doesn’t stop there. These companies also enjoy a 24% higher profit margin than those who spend less on training. You might like to think of your business asset like your car. Your employees are the engine, and training them provides the fine-tuning and maintenance they need to ensure optimum performance. If you’re looking to sell that car, the potential buyer will be impressed if it hums like a dream. If you can show long term service records, they will be confident the vehicle has been prepared to perform well into the future. If you’re selling your business, your potential buyers need to see staff working like a well-oiled machine as a result of their performance being maintained by systems that are recorded, tried and tested. When you as the seller can show that the work of your staff is consistently excellent because you have developed well-refined management systems, you are a very attractive candidate indeed. For more information about setting productive goals in your business, contact Kerry Anne Nelson at Operation Verve http://www.operationverve.com

The end of the financial year brings with it the thrills of counting the beans of your business wins, or the condolences of tallying up losses. It is a perfect time to take stock of your current position and how you got here. Revise the goals you have set in your business for improved performance and better results.  Ultimately, your goals will be successful only when their achievement grows your business and establishes freedom. Often measurements are set around lag goals which is not always helpful. Lag goals are usually results oriented, meaning their achievement comes directly from your organisation’s activity. Lag goals are easy to measure but not as easy to improve or influence. These goals target outcomes such as the number of sales made or the amount of revenue produced.   While tracking them has value, they’re not always the most productive areas to set KPIs around, because they are by definition the type of goals that lag behind the activity being done. They can only be attained as a result of your routine business activity.   Lag goals are important to measure because results are important to achieve. But if you want to control the activity leading these results you need to set KPIs around lead goals. Lead goals measure what is actually being done in the here and now. They are easier to influence or improve because they deal with immediate progress and show the likelihood that you will reach your aims.   Lead goals track activities such as the amount of sales calls being made to result in the sales. They count the amount of customer interactions that you’re having which will result in revenue. They tally how many ads being presented on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to achieve the social media reach that you might be looking for.   To put it simply, the difference between lead goals and lag goals is the difference between counting the amount of workouts you do and counting the amount of kilos you lose. The workouts are directly within your control, while the weight loss is something you cross your fingers for in hope.   When you’re setting your business goals this financial year, be clear on the difference between lead goals (which are your daily and weekly routine activities) and lag goals (the results or the output of that activity). For more information about setting productive goals in your business, contact Kerry Anne Nelson at Operation Verve http://www.operationverve.com/   

Did you know that 97% of all businesses here in Australia are small businesses? And did you also know that over 67% of small business owners don’t make it through to survive their first 5 years? Running a business is not for the faint of heart. Entrepreneurship is undeniably risky. While there are a number of small businesses that perform well and are continuously profitable, a larger portion of businesses fail without the proper tools in place to achieve critical business objectives. So many small businesses are on an inevitable path to failure. Here are four reasons why small businesses fail: Not making enough sales A large number of businesses fail because they are over-reliant on a very small number of clients. It takes just one unexpected closure to result in a significant fall to rocky financial. Short-term future earnings can be massively reduced, and invoices for completed work can go unpaid. While maintaining caution about spreading yourself too thin, you should try not to rely on a very small client base. If you deal with a very few clients, or if a small number make up the bulk of your turnover, you should begin scouting for new prospects. 2. Expenses are too high – Just as good cash flow keeps a business afloat, poor cash flow can sink it. If your bills exceed cash on hand, you’ve got a cash flow problem. Cash flow can also shift dramatically depending on the time of year, or even by day of the week. What makes it even more challenging is that cash is most needed when your business is growing. A strict handle on cash flow helps insulate your business during struggles, downturns, or unpredictability, and also allows more flexibility during growth periods. 3. Record keeping  As a small business owner, you understand your business’ processes inside and out. You probably lose sleep at night worrying about your sales. You’re passionate about your business succeeding, and you’ve invested your life’s work into it. But, there are metrics that small business owners often overlook and fail to record and track effectively, which ultimately hinders them from making strategic plans thus preventing them to succeed in their businesses. 4. Strategic management  A 2011-12 report by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) found that 44 percent suffered poor strategic management. This is another common reason why small businesses fail. For a small business to grow and succeed, it needs a good strategy and a plan to support it. As an entrepreneur, don’t make the mistake of excessive idealism concerning your business, don’t be so focused on your vision for the business that you forget or neglect creating a strategic plan that factors in important components of your business and addresses them adequately. Having a clear understanding of exactly what we are dealing with here in our small business journey is half the battle. It is vital that we keep the passion we have for our small business in check with the realities of our very survival. Developing a clear plan to address each of these four areas in our small business is the only way that we will earn our right to be on the positive side of the statistics, growing and expanding beyond our humble beginnings to the larger operation we always imagined.   If this article has struck a chord with you, please reach out to Kerry Anne online. She loves hearing about her readers’ businesses and is passionate about helping them to transform their operations into the Freedom Machine they’ve wanted all along. She is dedicated to establishing proven business systems to create team certainty and sustainable expansion which open pathways to new lifestyle choices. http://www.operationverve.com/   

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It’s hard to keep up appearances in your business when the backend is chaotic and stressful. Successful businesses thrive on the hard work of well-oiled business processes, dedicated employees, excellent communication, continuous innovation and a desire to provide more to customers. All of these depend on how well managed a business is – how effective the management is in steering the business in the right direction. Whether you are the business owner, a customer or a prospective investor, you want to be a part of a business that’s being run smoothly and efficiently. Let’s explore the five groups that can see all the behind the scenes pieces of your business. These are the people who experience the effects of a poorly managed business, which this puts you on the back foot when it comes to driving business growth: STAFF: The first group of people is your staff. What does your business look like from a staff point of view? The more you can get your staff flowing competently and confidently, you will find that they are the very people that will pick up the mission of your business expansion and drive it forward are better than you ever could. Make sure to create a supportive environment where everyone knows what a good job looks like. And when that is done, ensure that work is getting rewarded. CUSTOMERS: The next group of people who are going to see the effects of the backend of your business are your customers. They may not see what's going on in your business filing systems, but they're certainly going to get the effects of how things are run. Make sure your customers experience a consistently positive event when they engage with your business. They should always have the same type of service, receive the same sorts of follow up, and have the same sort of exemplary experience in your business. If they don't, they may not tell you, but they will tell their friends and family or put their reviews online. So make sure that the backend of your business is driving exceptionally positive customer experiences. SERVICE PROVIDERS: The next group of people who are going see the effect of a poorly managed business backend is your service providers. Your suppliers and contracted service providers have the potential to become some of your biggest raving fans and they have the ability to drive your business forward into new growth. If your business doesn't have a good flow when you're dealing with your service providers, that word will spread like wildfire. FAMILY: The fourth group of people to see the effects of the behind the scenes part of your business is your family. If you're going home tired and stressed, worried that you're juggling too many balls in the air because your systems and processes don’t flow, they are going to feel the impact. But conversely, if you are refreshed, and constantly achieving and expanding in a sustainable way, your family will jump on board and celebrate that with you. It's really important to get that behind the scenes aspect of your business set up and running smoothly because you want your family to be advocates for you and your business’s growth. YOU: And finally, the last person is you. You can put on all the smiles in the world when you’re in public, but if your business is a mess behind that veil, deep down you know that things aren't right. It is hugely important that you have a sense of integrity and honour about what’s happening in the engine room of your business. If your business is clean and clear, and it matches the glossy front end of your business, then you know the entire operation is being represented truthfully for everyone to see. If you want to stay ahead of the growth curve in your business, it's really important that the back end of your business matches what's happening in the front. If you want to continue to scale that business through to become something that's bigger than yourself, expanding, multiplying, creating a positive impact in the world, you need to realise that in reality, what’s happening behind the scenes is driving what people see and experience, and not the other way around.   If this article has struck a chord with you, please reach out to Kerry Anne online. She loves hearing about her readers’ businesses and is passionate about helping them to transform their operations into the Freedom Machine they’ve wanted all along. She is dedicated to establishing proven business systems to create team certainty and sustainable expansion which open pathways to new lifestyle choices. http://www.operationverve.com/