Category: Business Developmemt

I am not advising anyone to take any action based on anything written here. If you have any questions do not ask this CPA. Do not go to Ask The Consultant and send me questions. If you have questions, contact a qualified adviser on this topic.

Now having said that….

Are you in any programs that charge a monthly fee where you use their software as part of that program? Have you attended any conferences this year or seminars? Have you purchased any books, CD’s, DVD’s, rights to download PLR articles and other material?

Did you know the US tax law allows you to deduct expenses incurred for operating a business? Did you know your business does not have to be incorporated to take advantage of these deductions? Did you know that Section 179 of the US tax code allows you to deduct the cost of property purchased a business up to $100,000 and the list of eligible property for that deduction includes off the shelf software.

Steve Pohlit
Business Development Consulting

Steve Pohlit has more than 20 years experience running very large and medium sized companies. Steve now consults personally with clients to design and implement processes that will deliver improved business performance for the long term. Most projects are self-funding within 90 days. The client then experiences a very high return on investment. Learn more about the process of Increasing Profits by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less by visiting http://www.stevepohlit.com or you can call 727-587-7871 and speak with Steve directly.

Goal setting is a widely recommended and accepted part of making progress. You may have a goal to learn how to design a web site, how to implement a direct mail campaign, how to run a productive meeting or a goal to become more healthy. These goals may fit into one or more strategic goals like consistently increasing profits or having more energy. Goal setting seems simple enough. Why doesn’t goal setting work in most cases?

You may be thinking here comes the “take action” advice that you have read about, heard in seminars and even have tried to implement. This article is not a lecture on implementing specific steps that are required to achieve a defined goal. Most readers already know that implementing targeted action steps are required to achieve an intended end result. This article is about using The Secret to achieve your goals.

What is The Secret? My work is primarily focused on helping companies achieve their performance potential. If you have read the material in my mini-course “How To Increase Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less” you already know I plant the seed for achieving the profit improvement goal even before the project starts. The project then begins to focus on specific tasks that need to be completed to achieve the goal. Once on the road to achieving the near term goal, we move to a further refinement in how the company operates longer term in order to sustain the targeted profitable growth rate.

From experience I know the process works perfectly. What I didn’t know was why it worked better in some cases than in others. Then I discovered The Secret. Simply stated the most successful companies had leaders who not only bought into the process for achieving intended results, but who also started living the results in their minds as if they were already achieved.

I recognized long ago that by using the words “painting the picture of success” those who did the painting were the most successful. But honestly I didn’t understand that’s what was happening until I began a close examination of what went well and what didn’t for me personally and why. In every instance what happened was a direct result of what I was imaging in my mind. The more I studied “The Secret” the more I realized the principles are universal which is why some of my clients really started flying like eagles and others did not accelerate at a similar pace.

If you talk with people who have successful coaching businesses, you will find their programs generally run for many months or even a year to allow time for the concepts they are teaching to become part of their coaching student’s life. When those coaches share all the facts you will find that even though people are paying money for the program, only a minority really work the program. In addition when the program is over, a high percentage of the people going through those programs fall back to their old habits in a short period of time.

My consulting work with business clients is no different. All my clients who work through the entire process end up doing better. A small percentage really excel. They outperform any previous results and they outperform the competition. Why? Because they see it happening in their mind before it does and they attract that which fuels the painting of the picture. That Is The Secret.

Want more? Go to this site and order the DVD www.theseret.tv and this is no affiliate link. (Wish it were!)

Steve Pohlit, Business Development Consultant
“Helping Companies Achieve A Consistently High Rate of Profit Growth”

Fraud and Failure are the two big F’s that represent the dark side of business. Both are rampant in on line and off line business models. This article addresses the risk of business failure in business with focus on an online Internet Marketing example since the true story included in this report is recent. It also provides guidance on achieving long lasting business success..

Nearly all marketing copy focuses on building revenue. Building revenue is required to build a business. Building profits is required to stay in business.

During a recent visit with the CEO of a company that markets physical products on line. This particular company has regularly recorded sales near $200,000 a week ($10 million a year.) They inventory nearly nothing and their gross margins are very good.

This CEO I met had no internet experience when he started. He had an idea and taught himself some web site design skills. With a very basic web site he began selling a few products that manufacturing companies drop shipped for him. From there, sales took off. With money rolling in, he hired people to help him and sales increased even more.

Today when you talk with him in detail about his business, you observe two things. He knows a lot about search engine optimization. He can tell you all the positives and negatives about each of the sites making up his VRE. The other thing you will notice is that he is very worried. He knows his business is in big trouble and he is hoping someone will help him fix it.

His business can be fixed. I am not sure who will be selected to help him, since once a person is “shell shocked” it is hard for them to pay attention to any rational discussion for more than about a minute. Others have already influenced his thinking on what should be done. My course of action would be different.

How does all this relates to you? Are you making as much profit as is possible from your business? Are you driving a proportionate share of each new revenue dollar to bottom line profit? What is your comfort level in running a business and I don’t mean just generating revenue?

How is it possible for a company to build online sales with decent margins to a level of approximately $10 million a year and be on the brink of total business failure? How is it possible for a off line company with sales of $1.5 billion to go out of business? Failure happens and the frequency is high.

Here are some things to consider. My FREE course “How To Increase Profits by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less” details the steps I recommend to all clients. Guess what!! This material is focused on the exact steps for achieving continual business success. For example, one of the products you receive with this course is a spreadsheet showing you how to maintain a schedule of cash receipts and disbursements on a rolling 8 week forcast. This ties to a financial flash that reports on your company’s financial strength. I use this very same template with every client whether it has $3 million in sales or $200 million. The course is FREE and you can register at my business consulting site.

A final note: if you are worried about the financial strength of your busiess, please call me at 727-587-7871. The initial consultation is complementay. It is possible corrective action is needed immediately to strengthen cash profits and protect your business. Most often with businesses that fail, the signs are not acknowledged soon enough and the corrective action is inadequate. Don’t let this F happen to you.

Wishing You Health, Wealth and Prosperity

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant

The number of companies using classic lead generation and direct response marketing is very small, the opportunity for marketers to help others is huge. You don’t have to be one of the gure’s to make a difference. Here are some examples of what is working:

McDonalds

McDonalds promotes a $1.00 menu in many markets. Do they lose money on this promotion? For just the $1.00 menu, McDonalds probably covers all of their food costs. In the accounting world after considering other direct costs, McDonalds is probably not making any money on the dollar meal promotion. So why do they do it?

First the dollar promotion is very popular with students and even that group generally spend more than a dollar adding on additional items to their order. Students who like the deal, bring their friends and the average ticket often exceeds $3.00. In the fast food industry McDonalds is doing quite well.

The $1.00 meal is classic lead generation. Is it perfect direct response marketing? Hardly, since McDonalds still does not do much to build their data base of customers and use it for a direct to customer communication strategy.

Here are a couple of other examples:

Men’s Warehouse

They offer the “Perfect Fit Program”. This is classic direct response marketing. On line or in the store there are attractive offers to become part of this program. Members receive attractive offers by email on special buys and sales. Based on my experience with this retailer, they execute their lead generation and communication strategy very well.

Blue Hippo

Have you ever seen these brief informercials on TV? Blue Hippo wants you to send you a computer. They target people with limited resources by offering them a weekly payment plan. It appears they will send a computer to just about anyone. Their promotion is also classic direct response. The ad runs and viewers are asked to call an 800 number. Very easy to calculate return on investment. Run the ad, measure the calls received and measure the conversion of calls received to shipments booked. I have no idea of the economics of their business, but if it is like other pay by the week businesses the profit margins are huge.

The Number of Good Examples of Direct Response Marketing Are Increasing. Companies are beginning to wake up to the importance of measuring return on investment from marketing dollars. However, for every business having a marketing program that is structured to track return on investment, there are thousands that do not.

Even the companies that have in-house marketing experts often do not really know how to maximize the return on investment from their marketing dollars. Just this week I met with the CEO and marketing expert of a medium sized company that I am helping with a business plan and projections in connection with their interest in securing additional funding for an accelerated growth program. In examining what they have done in the past, I learned they purchased a targeted list of 5,000 leads. A mailing campaign with postcards was designed and implemented.

Sounds good so far. Upon closer examination, no testing was done on the marketing message. They could have used Google Adwords to test response rates and conversion of versions of their message. Even if they didn’t want to do that, they should have tested a sample of the 5,000 before have the postcard printed for a three step sequential mailing. The point is they are doing something, they are trying but they missed several key points that would have increased their return on investment.

Being on the list of most of the well known direct response marketers, it seems natural to identify gaps in my marketing expertise. Then I simply start paying closer attention to the marketplace and find huge opportunities for improvement. With every one of my consulting clients I work through with them enhanced processes and procedures to grow revenue and maximize gross margin and net profit. This approach is detailed in the free course “How To Increase Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less” which can be found at www.stevepohlit.com and “Blogging for Profits” which is another free series that can be found here at www.stevereports.com

May Your Profits Grow and You Have Fun With The Journey

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant

Leadership is the most important factor in predicting business success or failure. A company’s strength or weakness is determined by its leader.

Recently, I started working with a privately held company that is owned by a family and where a number of family members work in the business. This is a very common picture. What is also common whether the business is family owned or not is a lack of clear direction and day to day discipline where resources are focused on the most important revenue and cost drivers.

I regularly hear a list of excuses and over time while I am working at different companies in different industries, the list is nearly always the same. In nearly every case when I ask a question as to why a certain work function is not performing it invariably comes down to a family member in the job or some loyal employee in the job that has established their way of doing things and the company’s leader is afraid of upsetting the apple cart.

How To Establish Strong Leadership In A Business

When I talk about this subject and give examples of ineffective leadership, most people think I quickly recommend replacing the person. Since some of my clients are family owned companies and the CEO is often the head of the family in addition to being head of the business, replacing that person is not an option. Even if the company is not a family owned business, replacing the CEO is far down the list of preferred options for strengthening the leadership position.

The process of strengthening leadership is detailed in my free course “How To Increase Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less” which you can subscribe to at www.stevepohlit.com This article will further enhance your understanding as to the actions I have taken with clients that have been successful in creating leaders that have helped their companies build revenue and profits.

I have found most leaders do not have a clear plan for making money and so they cannot guide their organization to success. The second most common issue I find is that where a leader does have a plan for making money, they fail to follow the steps that are needed to be taken each day and each week to implement the plan. I would say that among the CEOs I have counseled, most know what makes them money, most know how to make more money, but many do not have the disciplined process in place to make it happen.

My most recent client is a great example and is the motivator for me writing this article. This client absolutely knows how to do the work of their business. The CEO is a master of this work and teaches others how to do this work well. They are awful at knowing how to make money at what they do. In fact, they do not get receive accurate information on their business performance and without change they never will because there is nobody employed in this company who has the training and skills required to produce the information they need. We are fixing that. This is more common than you think. Even where there are people trained on providing required information, it is often too little and too late.

Step number 1 is to make sure there is a clear understanding of what makes a company money and how. Step number 2 is to fine tune the day to day resource allocation so people spend their time making money. Day to day means every day and this is where we run into problems. It is not human nature to follow a disciplined schedule every day no mater how important the tasks are to making money. This discipline deficiency factor is often most acute among CEOs who are entrepreneurs and CEOs who are leaders because they were born into it. So it is important to teach them Steps 1 and 2 first and then if that doesn’t work another person is likely to be needed as the company’s day to day leader.

Recently in Business Week, Jack and Suzy Welsh advised a family member concerned about business direction to recruit a CEO. I really hesitate to disagree with Jack since he has been so successful as the now retired CEO of G.E., but in my experience many companies do not have the experience to hire an experienced and highly qualified CEO. Some that come to this conclusion will rely on a recruiter. This can work but is very risky. Of course I am going to recommend the right consultant. Are there others besides me that will guide you on the approach that I recommend? Yes I am sure there are. If you decide to talk with your banker, attorney, outside accountant, tax accountant, prospective consulting firms or your neighbor, here is what you need to do first:

1. Make sure you have a clear definition of what makes money in your business and how much. This means you need to have good information on revenue trends and gross margin by categories of revenue source.
2. Objectively define your human resource strengths and weaknesses.
3. Accurately forecast your near term cash inflows and expenditures. The worksheet I provide in my free course that I mentioned earlier details how this should be done.
4. Outline what you believe is the best near term strategy for your business (12 months or less) based on your company’s history and performance in the past six months.
5. Take a couple sheets of paper and see what your actual organization chart looks like. Enter the pay for each person you include on this functional organization chart.

The above five steps are not all you will need but when someone is advising you on how to run your business or how to recruit a leader, they better be bringing up at least four out of five of the above or you should be running away from that meeting as fast as you can.

Does a strong leader guarantee business success? There are no guarantees but a strong leader who is fixated on the handful of actions that make the most difference in revenue and profits will give your company the best chance for success long term.

To Your Extraordinary Success,
Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevepohlit.com
www.stevereports.com

P.S. I am developing a new blog at www.successtips.us You are invited to check it out and submit your own success tip.