Lessons 1/2: Understand your Numbers

The first module is built around understanding many of the important numbers in your business. Not necessarily your gross sales turnover (I hope you know that!) or even your earnings? There are other numbers that can underpin your success – or otherwise . In the first two lessons you will work on an Excel spreadsheet (or Google Sheet) which you will complete so that you can get to grips with these numbers. A video at the start will explain what you need to do to fill it in, and there will be help provided over the two-week period. You will also see how changing these numbers will affect your sales and profitability!

Lessons 3/4: Understand your Customer

One of the keys to Business Success is Understanding your Customer. Who is your ideal customer – who will buy from you, preferably more than once, who purchases your most profitable products and services and with whom you enjoy working? This module helps you to create your “customer avatar” or “buyer persona” (different terms for the same thing) by analysing your data so that you know who your current customers are and where they are. You will also learn how to make a best guess of their wants, needs and preferences.

A video teach will show you how to do this, and then you will have a workbook in which to make notes and define your ideal customer avatar (or more than one, if appropriate for your business).

Lessons 5/6: Understand your Sales Process

Everyone sells! We may not consider ourselves to be “salespeople” but we all (unless we sell EXCLUSIVELY online) will engage with prospective buyers to encourage them to make that purchase! Many organisations may have quite long sales cycles (the time between initial contact and final sale). There are many good reasons for mapping out your sales process – even if you do sell online. Once you have an idea of what the stages are, and how long buyers spend in each stage, you can devise strategies to encourage them to move on. A tracking system can either automatically send emails to “stuck” buyers or remind you to get in touch with them!

One of the most important stages is “Qualification” – are you making sure you only work with the right clients?

You can also get a handle on the important metrics – how many leads do you need in order to get a final sale? How long does the process take? Can you forecast from the data – both in terms of cashflow and resources?

After the initial teach you will have a workbook and worksheets, and there will be supplementary video training sessions over the two weeks for this module.

Sales / order process – where does business come from and how do you get them over the finish line? Define the steps – make sure you are qualifying leads so that you only do profitable work.

Lessons 7/8: Business Processes

Standard Operating Procedures (or SOPs) – are one of the best ways of bringing order to your business! Michael Gerber in the EMyth suggests that we should act as if we were going to franchise our businesses and document every process – so everyone can do the tasks. You may not have plans to grow and take on staff, but there is still a compelling reason to spend some time working out, and writing down, the best way of performing each task. (Especially if you don’t do it very often and have to reinvent the wheel every time).

You might be considering taking on staff, in which case it’s really important to ensure that quality is maintained and customers continue to have the same (or better experience). Even if you don’t want to grow you will find you will save time by having measurable, repeatable processes.

For this module, you will have the initial teach and then workbooks to help you find out how to analyse and document your business processes, with check-ins along the way. Then if you do have the option of delegating or outsourcing you will know that everything is being done to your standard.

SOPs – repeatable procedures – what are the systems and processes in your business – how can you write them down so that others can follow them – do you want to increase staff or outsource?

Lessons 9/10: Find apps and programs which can help you

In this module we will look Apps and programs which can help you – from organising your projects to tracking time. There is a wealth of apps in the market for small businesses but we will only cover 2 or 3.

You will see how to download and set up at least 2 apps which may be of use to you and will have the opportunity to make use of them on a free trial – so that you can evaluate before investing (sometimes you can stay on the free version forever!) . The structure will help you in this process – too often we take a free trial and then have no idea of how to evaluate it – or even find the time! You will be given some tasks to do to test the software for your needs.

Lessons 11/12: Organise your customer data and get communicating

Now you have your processes sorted, you can consider how to use software to manage and organise everything. This module will help you to set up a simple CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system (free software) to help you boost your productivity.

You may think that you’re not “ready” for CRM but in truth setting up a system which will hold all your important business information in one place makes a lot of sense. You will only have to enter any piece of information once and then be able to access it from anywhere. If you need to share that information with staff or associates or your Virtual Assistant then you can set it up to do this.

Marketing and communications – how can you gather information on customers, prospects and sales, and use that to deliver great customer service – and send communications to gather clients and aid customer retention.

It’s a Wrap

This is a final session to bring all the learning points together and set you up for the coming weeks and months.