Improve Your Business

As a business owner, the day to day tasks of running of a business can very quickly take over all of  our time; time that could be spent on the important task of improving or building on a business.

Taking a step back from daily business activities and taking the time to look at your business objectively, can identify areas that could be improved upon such as business systems, business operations and how your business strategy is tracking and at the end of the day improve the scope of the business and its profitability.

This short course is a great way to take a step away from working in your business and help you to work ON your business instead, i.e. ensure that you can analyse what is working and what you are doing well and what you can improve upon.

This is a great opportunity to take your business to the next level, increase profitability and work smarter by considering your own strengths and weaknesses and that of the business, in order to improve the business.

Lesson Structure

There are 7 lessons in this course:

1. Recognising Problems - Where Things Go Wrong?
   • How to Recognise Problems
   • What Do Most People Do?
   • Focus on the Issues
   • Comparing Your Business to Your Competitors
   • Maintaining a Balanced Perspective
   • Recharge Your Batteries
   • Always Run Your Business as if it is For Sale
   • Checklist for Identifying the Problem
   • Finance
   • Product Range
   • Customer Service
   • Staffing
   • Marketing
   • Know your Competition
   • Checklist to Identify a Problem
2. Changing with the Times
   • How Do You Do This?
   • 1) Understanding Control
   • 3) Adapt to Technology
   • 5) Predict the Future
   • 6) Know when to Get Out
   • 6) Keep Learning
   • Some Golden Rules of Business
3. Revise Financial Management
   • Initial Start-up Finance
   • Financial Difficulties in Business
   • 1) Financial Service Providers
   • 2) Spending
   • 3) Payments
   • How to Borrow Money and Get the Best Deal
   • Business Costing
   • Pricing
   • Cash Flow
   • Ensure as well as Insure
   • Budgeting
   • Bookkeeping
   • Options for Improving Your Financial Position
   • Up-scaling a Business
   • The Cash Cycle – Cash Flow and Liquidity
   • Managing Bad Debts
4. Revise Your Marketing
   • What Do We Mean By Marketing?
   • Raising Awareness
   • Convincing Them to Buy
   • Closing a Sale
   • Collecting Payment
   • Do You Understand the Basic Principles of Marketing?
   • Target Marketing
   • Supply and Demand
   • Competition
   • Know your Competition
   • Opening and Closing a Sale
   • Building a Client Base
   • Visibility and Impact
   • Billboards
   • Social Media
   • Websites
   • Newsletters
   • Aggressive Advertising
   • Blogs
   • E-zines
   • Discounts
   • Competitions
   • Networking
   • Re-focus Your Marketing
   • The Law and Selling
   • Marketing Strategies
5. Revise Your Product
   • Choosing a Product Range
   • Why is the Product Not Selling?
   • Analysing the Product
   • Customer Feedback
   • Deciding to Drop a Product
   • Staff Awareness of Products
   • Use Accounting Practices for Stock Tracking and Stock Control
   • Product lines and mixes
   • Product life cycle
6. Revise and Engage Your Staff
   • The Individual as Staff
   • Employ Staff When Needed
   • Employing Permanent Staff
   • Employ the Workforce You Need, Not the Workforce You Want
   • Legal Obligations and Moral Obligations When Employing Staff
   • Who Do You Employ?
   • Employing Friends and Family – For and Against
   • Motivating Staff
   • Incentives
   • Giving Staff Responsibility
   • Avoiding Stress in Your Staff and Yourself
7. Using Business Systems to Improve a Business
   • Sales funnels
   • What is a Sales Funnel?
   • The Process
   • Ways to Create Sales Funnels
   • What Does a Sales Funnel Look Like?
   • Retail Sales and Sales Funnels
   • Keeping the Momentum Up
   • Setting sales targets
   • Sales analysis
   • why a Sales Analysis?
   • Other business systems
   • inventory Control
   • Striking a Better Deal - Optimising the Supply Chain
   • Budgeting and Budget Types
   • How Do You Make a Properly Considered Decision?
   • Solving Problems Systematically
   • Business Problem Considerations
   • Conclusion
   • FINAL ASSESSMENT

Explore what makes the Difference between Boom or Bust in a Business

This course will explore the actions that matter when a business is not performing as you would hope.  Knowing what you can do is the first step toward taking action that could save the business owner from wasting time and money unnecessarily. This course is designed to inform you, and with a raised awareness, embolden you to improve the performance of any business.

Who is the course for?

• Business owners
• Business managers
• Business developers
• Business Coaches and Advisors
• Business Students and aspiring business owners