•Facts:
nine out of ten businesses run by professionals: doctors, lawyers,
dentist, accountants, consultants and business coaches are struggling
to survive •Facts: nine out of ten professional businesses do not have
a good marketing system •Facts: nine out of ten professional
entrepreneurs do not have a vision of their finished business •Facts:
nine out of ten professional businesses do not have a good business
system •Facts: nine out of ten professional businesses do not have a
good business model
Manchester (Sharewellnewswire.com) September 3, 2012 -
o Do you struggle to attract new clients to your business?
o Do you struggle to retain existing clients?
o Do you struggle with seasonal work overload?
o Do you have a secession plan?
o How do you measure staff productivity?
o How do you measure your marketing ROI?
o Do you know the bottleneck preventing the growth of your business?
A series of books on how to effectively market and manage a professional firm have been published. The books entitled:
• How To Market And Manage A Professional Firm
• How To Market And Manage A Private Security Firm
• How To Market and Manage A Corporate Training Firm
• How to Market And Manage A Dental Practice
• How To Market And Manage A Private Medical Practice
• How To Market And Manage A Consulting Firm
• How To Market And Manage An Accounting Firm
• How To Market And Manage A Law Firm
• How To Market And Manage A Coaching Firm
were published by The Business Education Center.
These books contain the latest strategies for marketing and managing professional firms.
Every
successful business, whether it is the HSBC Bank in the City of London
or a cleaning business in a New Delhi ghetto has five things in common:
• Visionary leadership
• Great people
• Good marketing system
• Good system
• Good business model
Visionary Leadership
Ray
Kroc is known to most people as the founder of McDonalds but as
business students know, the McDonalds brothers founded McDonalds.
However, the McDonalds brothers knew how to make hamburger. When Kroc
came into the business, he saw a vision that was beyond hamburger
preparation, he saw an effective business system that could be
replicated.
Like
the McDonald brothers, most professionals are experts in their areas of
expertise. However, they lack the vision to see the finished business.
Every successful business has within its walls a visionary leader who
is capable of envisioning the final product even in its formative
stages.
Steve Jobs envisioned changing that world – indeed Apple has changed the world.
Bill Gates envisioned a computer on every desk, which has come to fruition.
Henry Ford envisioned building car for the masses; today car is a necessity not a luxury.
But
something like vision is intangible. You have to feel it and see it in
your mind’s eyes. So how do you create a vision for your professional
business? Where do you start the envisioning process? The answers are
in the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series.
In chapter one of the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series, you will learn:
• Questions to ask and answer in the vision creation process
• How to communication your vision to others to solicit buy-in
Great People
Bill
Gates once said “Take our best 20 people away, and I will tell you that
Microsoft would become an unimportant company.” Microsoft has almost
half a million staff yet Mr. Gates concedes that taking away just 20
will render Microsoft irrelevant.
Those
20 people that Bill Gates spoke about are what Seth Godin called
Linchpins: the indispensables. Or those Brad Smart described as ‘A
talents’.
Who
are ‘A talents’? They are the people with the ability to change the
fortune of any organisations. We see them in sport teams. They are the
glue that holds the teams together. They are those with the ability to
change a game with a single move.
‘A
talents’ are difficult to find. All of them are already employed, so
how can a professional firm seeking to add ‘A talents’ to its ranks
find them?
The answer to this question is in the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series.
David
Parker the co-founder of HP stated that “No company can grow revenues
consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people
to implement that growth and still become a great company. If your
growth rate in revenues consistently outpaces your growth rate in
people, you simply will not-indeed - build a great company”.
“The
ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the
last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few
organizations are good at it” Peter Drukker the management guru.
Do
you want to learn how to attract Linchpins to your business? Then you
will need to read the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books
series.
In chapter four of the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series, you will learn:
• How to recruit ‘A talents’
• Where to find ‘A talents’
• How to create conducive working environment to attract ‘A talents’
• How to create metrics for performance measurement
Good Marketing System
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted: the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
The
above quotation is attributed to John Wanamaker the merchant king
sometimes between 1838–1922. It is more than a hundred years since he
uttered those words, yet they are still being used by advertising and
marketing agencies as an excuse for not being able to demonstrate the
return on investment for their services.
In
1923 Claude Hopkins wrote in ‘Scientific Advertising’: “The time has
come when advertising has in some hands reached the status of a
science. The causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well
understood. The correct method of procedure have been proved and
established. We know what is most effective, and we act on basic law.
Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one
of the safest business ventures”.
Pause
for a moment and reflect on the fact that those words were written in
1923 when the parent of the Google two were not even born. Today thanks
to Google we now have the ability to measure our advertising within
hours, yet advertising and marketing agencies still cite a quotation of
the 1800 as an excuse for not being able to provide an accurate return
on investment to their clients.
Do you know why?
Answer:
most professional entrepreneurs do not know a thing about marketing.
You have to inspect what you expect. However, you cannot inspect
something if you do not know what result to expect.
Marketing
fundamentals have not changed since the dawn of time because human
behaviour has not changed. You cannot run a success professional
business if you do not understand marketing fundamentals.
This
is not to say you have to do the marketing yourself, but you need to
understand marketing fundamentals so that you know what result to
expect either from your in- house sales team or marketing agency. You
will learn those marketing fundaments in the: How to Effectively Market
and Manage books series.
In chapter two and three of the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series, you will learn:
• How to position your professional business
• How to create new market for your professional business
• How to spy on your competitors
• How to effectively use social media
• How to know what constitutes value to your client
• How to conduct value pricing of your professional services
Good System
“I
should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most
possibilities for improvement add up to proportions something like
this: 94% belong to the system (responsibility of management); 6%
special” Edward Deming
“We
believe that there was one major quality breakthrough in the 1980s… It
was not statistical process control, employee involvement,
just-in-time, or total quality… It was the realisation by management
that the business and manufacturing processes, not the people, is the
key to error-free performance”. H. James Harrington.
The
above quotations endeavour to highlight the importance of system in any
business. At the commencement of any business venture, the entrepreneur
is the system. The entire business operation rests on his shoulder.
However,
as the business grows, most entrepreneurs fail to grow along with their
businesses. They remain the person who responds to the 911 call. The
moment they are out of the office, the entire operation grinds to a
halt.
No
business that depends on a single individual or a handful of people
will ever grow. For a business to grow, it requires systems that are
divorce from the founder or a handful of senior managers.
How is such as system created? The answer is in the: How to Effectively Market and Manage books series.
In chapter one of the: How to effectively Market and Manage books series, you will learn:
• How to create an effective professional business system
• What systems are best suited for professional businesses
• When to begin the process of system creation
When to begin the process of system creation
Good business model
Before
Google, there were other search engines. Before Facebook, there were
other social media sites. So what did Google and Facebook get right
that the rest of the search engines and social media sites got wrong?
Google and Facebook had better business models.
In
Value Migration, Adrian Slywotzky stated that “A business (model)
design is the totality of how a company selects its customers, defines
and differentiates its offerings (or responses), defines the tasks it
will perform itself and those it will outsource, configures its
resources, goes to market, creates utility for customers and captures
profits. It is the entire system for delivering utility to customers
and earning a profit from that activity”.
In:
The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation,
Chesbrough and Rosenbloom stated that there are six specific functions
of a business model:
Articulate the value proposition – the value created to users by using the product.
Identify the market segment – to whom and for what purpose is the product useful; specify how revenue is generated by the firm.
Define
the value chain – the sequence of activities and information required
to allow a company to design, produce, market, deliver and support its
product or service.
Estimate the cost structure and profit potential – using the value chain and value proposition identified.
Describe the position of the firm with the value network – link suppliers, customers and competitors.
Formulate
the competitive strategy – how will you gain and hold your competitive
advantage over competitors or potential new entrants.
The
key to the success of any business is the type of business model
adopted from the formative stages of the business. Professional
businesses that fail to grow are struggling because they did not create
a good business model in their formative stages.
What
is the best way of developing a good professional business model? The
answer is in the: How to Effectively market and Manage books series.
In chapter one of the: How to Effectively market and Manage books series, you will learn:
• The functions of business model in your professional business
• The best business model for a professional business
• How to create a professional firm business model
###
If
you are an entrepreneur: doctor, lawyer, accountant, consultant,
business coach, corporate trainer, dentist, private security firm owner
and you want to learn how to move your professional business from
perpetual start-up to a 7 Figure per annum business, click on the link
below to order your copy of:
You can download the entire summary of each book for free by clicking on the below links:
Market_Manage_Professional_Firm.pdf
The
Business Education Center is the business intelligence hub for
professional businesses. The Business Education Center provides
business development information to businesses such as private medical
practices, dental practices, law firms, accounting firms, consulting
firms, business coaching firms, private security firms, corporate
training firms and retail organisations.
The
Business Education Center produces educational materials such as books,
audio books, DVDs, home study course and workshops and seminars. For
more information about The Business Education Center, please visit:
www.theprofitexperts.co.uk
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