Six Simple Strategic Steps to SME Success – An Introduction

March 22, 2012

If you run a private business with revenues between £500,000 and £20 million, I expect you are having a tough time of it.

Being at the top of a business, probably one you started yourself, can be lonely but also brings with it responsibility.

Responsibility to make the right decisions so that your business is successful, you continue to provide for your family and keep the jobs of your employees safe.

This programme which follows my Six Minute Strategist Methodology of One Topic into Six Issues in less than Six Minutes is all about helping you get a better understanding of your business.  The Six Topics of this programme are:

  1. Appreciation – evaluating your business as it is today
  2. Optimisation – making the most of your business today
  3. Engagement – growing your business today
  4. Capital Raising – expanding the capital base of your business
  5. Acquisitions – growing your business by acquiring another business
  6. Exit – Selling your business and maximising your wealth creation

I strongly believe in a hostile business environment like today, Entrepreneurs need to master these six topics to be successful with their business.  This programme sets out how they can achieve this and I hope will make a positive and long lasting contribution to their business success.

The Six Principles behind the programme are:

  1. Simplicity – making the complex easy to understand and implement
  2. Control – putting this back firmly in your hands – no more reactive decision making
  3. Planning – prior preparation and planning prevents poor performance
  4. Value Creation – long term for you and your family
  5. Choice – giving you options and opportunities and putting you in a position to take them
  6. Flexibility – this is not a dogma but a catalogue of strategies and tactics for you to adopt and adapt for your business

Do any of these six questions strike a chord of familiarity?

  1. Where is my business today?
  2. What is my business worth?
  3. Where do I want to be in 5 years time?
  4. How can I grow my business?
  5. How can I get more capital for my business?
  6. When is the right time to sell my business?

These are all major strategic issues which you face.

  • What are your personal objectives?
  • To run a lifestyle business?
  • To own your own business until you retire?

OR

  • To accumulate capital and wealth and gain the personal freedom that provides
  • To Grow your business?
  • To Sell your business for a price that will change your life?
  • To work hard for the next three to five years to achieve these objectives.

Remember a salary is what you are paid – wealth is what you earn.  One happens to you the other you make happen.

How about these more day to day operational issues?

  1. What are my likely sales next month
  2. Do I make the right level of Profit?
  3. What are my operating expenses?
  4. Am I paying the right level of salaries?
  5. How efficient is my capital strategy?
  6. How much cash does my business have?

These are all key questions.  However, like most entrepreneurs you have bootstrapped your company and everyday you work fast and hard to try to make it grow.  It is often difficult to find the time to address these issues or know where to start.

So how can I help?

I have been advising companies for nearly 25 years and blogging for the past two years about Corporate Strategy.

I believe that there are Six Strategic Steps that an entrepreneur needs to master to be sucessful, particularly in todays challenging business environment.

Starting today you can either start on the road to managing these steps or you can do nothing and at some point in the future sell your business for what someone is prepared to offer you for it.  A purely reactive situation which you will not control.

Someone observed that there are four types of people in this world

  • People who make things happen
  • People who watch things happening
  • People who wonder what happened
  • People who do not realise that anything has happened.

I want to make you wealthier and more successful and to do that I need to make sure that you are one of the people in the first group and not one of the people in the other three.

So lets agree that the Do Nothing Scenario is a poor way to start.

In my next blog post I will discuss with you the first of the Six Simple Strategic Steps to SME Success – Appreciation – evaluating your business as it is today.

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