We've been talking to lots of business leaders about life and their business trajectory over the past few months. A few common themes have emerged: early panic, checking in on customers and suppliers, and most recently taking stock of what may be working and what isn't anymore. If you have not revisited your value proposition to target what your customers need most, you may have missed an opportunity. Here's how to do that, for best results.

Know Your Market

First, you must know your customer market quite well. What are they seeking when they come to your business? How do they find you, versus others in the market? New competitors are always entering high growth markets. Existing competitors may be offering new services, or there may be fewer competitors surviving in tight economic markets. Your priority is to understand and update your value proposition to the changing market needs. A few areas to check:

Is your customer demand the same, higher, or lower?

What new issues are facing your customers? Do you offer a solution for those?

Are you still relevant and preferred, or is there a bright, shiny new competitor?

Have you talked with your customers about their biggest challenges, concerns or pain points? How can you best help them before someone else does? 

If your customer's biggest issue is not where you add value, you may be on the path to irrelevance. Take stock, revisit your value proposition, and make some changes. Always keep close communication with your best customers to build agility and value. The hardest part may be to listen and learn, yet smart business leaders listen, learn, and make effective changes as quickly as possible. Get started now, if you're not already in discussions. In fact, you're doing market research, which offers a huge advantage in the long run. Yes, it takes time and skill. If you're not comfortable or confident, hire an expert. 

Revisit Your Business Plan

Once you understand where the market may have shifted, it's time to revisit your business model. Does your business focus on current customer needs, pain and value expectations? If not, changes are needed. Have you reconsidered what you specifically produce that your customers want, and how much demand is present in the market? What is your market share position, and where are there growth opportunities? Take stock of your assets, and consider where you can reduce expenses and add more value. We recommend a review and modification of the business or strategic plan at least annually. 

Innovate & Focus

What can you do to help customers get more done faster, easier, or at a better value, targeted to their biggest problem? When you focus on the most important customer problem with a value-added solution, you've added to your value proposition substantially! Can you solve more problems, solve a more important one than before, raise the solution up a notch to create more desired value, serve more customers with the same problem, or solve the problem better than anyone else? These are your value proposition assets. Here are some examples of ways that you may be able to innovate and expand:

• Create a new solution for a given customer profile (avatar)

• Imagine a new product or service that you've not done before, but have the assets and ability to deliver in the future

• Create a new advantage for a certain customer profile

• Dramatically lower your cost structure to lower your costs substantially

• Build upon your existing capabilities, including patents, infrastructure, skills and user base

• Develop a new value proposition based upon a new partnership

• Develop a new value proposition that your competitors can't copy

• Create value based on a new technology trend, or turn a new regulation to your advantage

• Be first to apply an existing business model from another sector to your sector

Design, Test & Deliver

You've identified what products or services to tweak, change or deliver going forward. Next comes the design and build phases, of exactly what and how to deliver the new value proposition. What is your marketing strategy to reach new prospects? There are at least seven critical questions to assess your model design for value, sustainability and profitability, before you deliver. Take a few minutes to review your business model design assessment, and assess your value proposition when your market changes. We also recommend that you sample any product or service changeswith your target market to find out what works well, and what needs tweaks before you expand. Once you refine your offerings, you're ready to capture a broader market at a better ROI! 

Business Value Proposition Checkup 

If you aren't sure how strong your value proposition is, click on the Business Value Proposition link above, and take our Checkup Survey. If you see many areas of opportunity, we recommend that you follow the outlined process above, or contact us to help navigate the process faster and easier. The strongest businesses see downturns and economic challenges as opportunities to recreate themselves even better. That's our vision for your business...

Dawn Garcia is Principal and Founder of Pursuit of Excellence LLC, an independent business management consulting firm specializing in service-based businesses; delivering leadership, business and talent strategy, and execution expertise. Experience the Excellence Driven® System and The Predictive Index® for your business, and achieve the results you need!  Every business needs help sometime; great leaders get help early, realizing greater returns.

When you need help, consult the experts. We're here for you and your business! 

Your Success is Our Success

 Let's face it, life at work over the past six weeks has been challenging for most of us. Whether you've been working from home, not working, or are considered an essential business, you've had to make many changes in your day-to-day role. Many of us have engaged in virtual meetings to lead our teams, to connect with current and prospective customers, and to engage in training programs. Meanwhile, the freedom of attire, time and commute savings are appealing too, especially to introverts. As a result, about 40 percent of our team members probably don't want to come back to the office, even to better work. Now, you're thrilled to bring people back to work amidst this, right? We're here to help you make this picture brighter by leveraging five key areas of opportunity for a better work environment upon return. Check these off before you re-open the door, and your customers and team members will thank you.

Take Inventory

Every change in your business impacts your work team, your customers, and your business model to some level. Take inventory on what changes have actually transpired that have helped you deliver your services or products to your customers, and which ones are practices that you had to do in the short term, that should naturally end. It sounds obvious, but get your team involved in this as well. This is the first part of successful change management - realize what has changed, and evaluate the impact. We recommend that you use a simple and proven tool: Start - Continue - Stop. Take a sheet of paper, and write on the top Start; in the middle write Continue; and at the bottom write Stop. Jot your thoughts on which practices should you start upon return, which new practices should continue, and which ones should stop. Then send it to some or all of your team. Get their input to what should be kept, tweaked or dropped. This is a huge benefit to not miss insights that are not under your radar, and it builds incredible buy-in and respect from your team. Even better, share your findings with the team for validation and modification before proceeding to make the changes. Creating better work also saves time and stress. 

Evaluate the Impact

Next, consider the impact of each identified change to your customers, stakeholders and team members. First, start with an impact to measures of importance to your customers, like time to respond, the quality rating of a service, and perhaps new sales or repeat sales. Then consider the impact to your stakeholders, or those that have a vested interest in your ongoing success as a business. These may include things like your financial position, support to the community, brand reputation, and other key measures. We include in this item an impact to your mission and vision. Lastly, consider the measurable impact to your team. Have you seen increases in employee engagement, retention, productivity, or volunteerism? If so, it's critically important to evaluate the practices that contributed to those changes, and preserve some of them for continued benefit. We recommend using an objective weighted matrix, like a Pugh Matrix to limit the inherent bias. If you're new to these tools, and would like to get more information, reach out to us below.  

Design the New Reality

Now it's time to revisit your business strategy or plan, and consider both a short and long-term new reality. What is substantially different both in your business and in your industry because of economic or market changes? Chances are you will need to revisit your business strategy at least in the short term. Perhaps, you will need to reduce your product or service offerings, adjust your pricing structure, or adjust the structure of your organization with different roles or a more flattened leadership. Perhaps you'll need to dial back on the proposed expansion to another site. We recommend creating a few different scenarios for short term modifications that each support the long-term strategy for sustainability, on track to your mission and vision. Once you're comfortable with the right short-term changes, then consider the impact on your long-term strategy. For many of us, it's tempting to think we know these pieces from our gut. Take the time to consider, plan, and project the impact of each change to business results. It will benefit the next steps.

Develop the Plan

You've designed a short and long-term return to your business. Now, how will you make that happen smoothly and effectively? In this step, you'll need to break down each change into implementation steps, to ensure a smooth progression. For example, if you're reducing the product or service options, how will you ensure that you have the right talent in place for the ones that you keep and promote? Do you need to shift your marketing materials to promote this service? Do you need to make any changes in your delivery or pricing? Does your team need additional training to achieve higher performance levels as you promote this service at a higher level? Is your competition in this space? What is your unique value proposition? All of the steps of evaluating a new product or service should be considered when promoting or changing an offering. This step ensures that you've planned for that successful implementation. 

Execute the Plan

Once you've reached this step, you have confidence in your analysis of the change, and have a clear plan to proceed toward a return to operations. As a leader, a key facet of executing any plan is a communication to those involved and affected. Translate your plan into key messages for the different groups affected, in language that is easily understood, and that matches their experience through the change. Be respectful, authentic, and transparent, as much as possible. Some messages will be in writing. Others that are more sensitive need to be in person, and still others may be in video to key stakeholders. Map each change to a communication strategy, and then determine the content and timing. We recommend developing this communication with your key leaders, to ensure sensitivity and alignment of the message across the organization. We also recommend that you use a tiered communication process to provide the most sensitive communications personally and first, and then systematically deploy the more general communication of the changes. Remind your team members of your social media policy. Reinforce messages in several different forms to reduce the potential for misinterpretation, recognizing that any sensitive message may get to the media. Build and reinforce trusted relationships through your communications. 

The second key aspect of execution is leadership alignment, support and accountability. Ensure that the plan is clearly understood by leadership, and that lines of accountability to specific activities and groups are known and accepted. Recognize that the work of leaders in this shift will be harder, and some will not be able to make the transition. While this should have been a consideration in developing the plan, if there are unforeseen impacts, recognize that this aspect is probably the greatest risk to your revised plan, and your employee retention and productivity. We recommend a high level engagement of your leaders to their teams, whether virtual or in person, with at least biweekly group check-ins, and weekly check-ins for key individuals. Depending on the span of control, there may be challenges to implement this level of support and engagement, however high level interaction is key to a successful transition. 

Evaluation - Talent Challenges? 

You may identify as you complete your plan, and return to a better new reality in your business, that you have some significant talent gaps. That's not uncommon, especially when you're creating conscious changes from former roles, with new competencies, skills and behaviors. As a senior or company leader, your role is to evaluate where your mid-level leaders are well-positioned, and where there may need to be additional training, or even a shift of roles to maximize natural wiring and preferences. It's much better to recognize this early in the process, to retain the team working with that leader. We recommend having weekly connections with your leaders, and to also connect with their teams informally to keep the lines of feedback open, boosting early awareness. 

If you find issues of leader misfit to the role, we recommend using a data-analytic tool to evaluate objectively the needs, drives and behaviors of the leader, to move them to a better fit, and to find a replacement that is better suited to the role required. The difference in performance results from this process is incredible, and worth the process to save key talent! If you'd like to discover more, select the link below to get more information.

Dawn Garcia is Principal and Founder of Pursuit of Excellence LLC, an independent business management consulting firm specializing in service-based businesses; delivering leadership, business and talent strategy, and execution expertise. Experience the Excellence Driven® System and The Predictive Index® for your business, and achieve the results you need! Every business needs help at some point; great business leaders actually get help when needed, realizing greater returns. See the difference in your business, when you work with a trusted business advisor, delivering just what you need.

When you need help, consult the experts. Our success is your success! 

Now, more than ever, business leaders must deliver services with streamlined resources, yet still meet customer expectations. Smart systems can get more done with less. Use technology to automate the routine aspects of your business, for better reliability and value! Enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms were designed years ago to meet this very need. Now, they are essential tools for business efficiency. Using an integrated set of software programs helps to minimize tedious steps in the process, by having the software seamlessly sending information to carry out specific functions automatically. Sound terrific? It really is. Automating and integrating back end functions save time, money and headaches, while actually growing your business!

How it Works

What kind of activities can be automated through an ERP? Routine functions where information is passed from one individual or system to another are great ERP uses, either in a message, document, invoice, or other means, triggering an action. Here's an example: managing a sales lead through a sale. 

1 - Prospective customer lands on a facebook post, and is interested in connecting for more information. They click on the link, taking them to the website. 

2 - Once on the website, the prospect is welcomed by a chat box with a bot, who is able to reply and route answers to the top 5 questions from most prospects. The prospect clicks an area of interest, and a lead form opens. The prospect enters a couple pieces of info, and sends. 

3 - An automated email is sent to the prospect, thanking them for their interest, and offering to download the answer to their question. When the form is accepted, the prospect is added to the CRM, and is routed to a sales associate for a follow-up call on the next business day. 

4 - An automated thank you message is sent once the prospect downloads the document. Included in the message is a special offer to receive a 20% discount on a related service, available for a low monthly fee. The prospect is interested, and clicks "learn more."

5 - Selecting the "learn more" option opens a next message that offers the discounted service, at the referenced rate. The prospect only has to select yes, enter payment information, and can begin right away. It's a great offer. The prospect engages, and submits payment.

6 - Completing the payment window triggers the service subscription for the prospect, referencing the information in the CRM. Additional fields or information are populated based upon the payment form completion, and the subscription service is activated. An order confirmation email is sent to the customer.

7 - A monthly recurring invoice is established automatically, with routing of revenues realized to the business bank account. Invoicing is auto-generated, and sent based upon order criteria (monthly on a set date, or other selection). Your sales are seamlessly recorded on your business financials. 

8 - An update to the customer account is now posted for the sales associate with a task for their follow-up call on their daily task list, for the next business day. Your customer is amazed with the efficiency and value of your services and team, and offers a raving testimonial on your site!

Realize, the first payment has been ordered and received without any human contact, with services delivered when and how the customer wanted, with all related documentation retained in the systems involved, for easy report generation. This is how easy it is to provide some services to customers through technology, reliably, and efficiently. Your business operates like a large business, at a fraction of the cost. That's smart business operations!

Getting Started

There are some essential background and setup pieces to make the system work exactly as you need it. First, you need to have systems that are capable of integration across types of functionality. Second, you need to have the specific processes set up within each program, and connected by rules and automation. Third, you need to test each of the processes, and likely build some content in specific messages for prospective customers, to make it all make sense on the customer side. That said, an ERP system typically includes at least: 1) a sales/CRM cluster, 2) financial management & bookkeeping cluster, 3) communication/task/project cluster, and 4) people/human resource cluster. Often software systems can be integrated through APIs, where the systems are programmed to talk to each other. If this sounds amazing, but you're not a tech guru, then you'll need to work with a professional to set this up, or plan on spending months learning how to do it yourself. Either can work, depending on your time, skills, and patience, however your customer will get a better experience when you use experts, and it helps you leverage the benefits a lot faster. 

Systems & Resources 

Like most professionals in this space, we have preferred systems that allow us to set up workflow functionality reliably and efficiently, using systems that are easy to integrate, or are already built for this purpose. If you're interested in finding out how this could work for your business, click the ERP Evaluation form on the link below, and we'll evaluate your business for a software system fit for greater efficiency. There's no cost to check it out...Why not? 

ERP Evaluation - Find Out More

Change can be hard, and yet staying on the same path may be dangerous if the world around us continues to change. In the midst of major work flow and talent disruption, explore how you may be able to maintain high levels of work quality using technology supports. When you use technology supports for the backend work, you free your team from the tedium, and allow them to expand their skills along with business growth. Most businesses find that they can automate as much as 30% of the routine tasks. That's a huge competitive advantage. Let's connect on the link below and explore your next steps! 

Your Success is Our Success

Dawn Garcia is Principal and Founder of Pursuit of Excellence LLC, an independent business management consulting firm specializing in service-based businesses; delivering leadership, business and talent strategy, and execution expertise. Experience the Excellence Driven® System and The Predictive Index® for your business, and achieve the results you need! Every business needs help sometime; great business leaders get help early, realizing greater returns. 

When you need help, consult the experts. We're here for you and your business!