The Alchemy ofBusiness Growth

You’re only as good as the opportunities you create - make sure you capitalise on a few of them on your way to climbing the ladder of success!

Starting and running a business is a huge challenge. It’s also a great privilege. You create the opportunity to serve so many special people – be it your team members, customers, suppliers and all the many other people who you meet on your journey.

Make no mistake, running a business is a tough task, tall order. More than 80% of small-businesses fail within the first 5 years of starting-up. If you’ve made it beyond this point then you deserve to be congratulated. You’re in the top 20% who made it through the immensely difficult task of survival. Now it’s time for you to think beyond survival – it’s your time to earn the reward of all the hard work you’ve put in your business over the years. You owe it to yourself!

There’s no secret recipe to running a successful business. But there are certain tried, tested and trusted techniques that work. Once you grasp these and implement them – your business will grow exponentially.

The BIG challenge is that most people aren’t trained in how to run a business. You will, no doubt, be able to resonate with this. This lack of training means you learn and improve on how to run your business whilst trying to actually run it at the same time. It’s an odd set of circumstances. You really are learning on the job and the price of failure is high. Maybe you left a successful career job, maybe you’ve invested a lot of money in an idea you believe in. Perhaps you wanted to create the job of your dreams. Or perhaps you’re working hard to put food on the table. Whatever the circumstances, you’re certainly doing your best to make a success of it, aren’t you?

The difficulty is that you have to learn through your mistakes. This means learning the hard way – you end up spending money on your failures! But the important thing here is that you need to learn from these failures, see them as part of the learning curve. Take stock, regroup and move on.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the best lessons are learnt through making some mistakes in life and in business. You most probably wouldn’t be the person you are had you not made those mistakes.

I’ve had some super successes. I’ve made lot of mistakes too – I call them fatal failures. Luckily not fatal enough to make me bankrupt! I’ve certainly learned a few things about business through those encounters. It is my intention to share some of those lessons with you through the entirety of this report.

It’s important you should know I have conducted over 2,300 business growth consultations. What this means is that I’ve seen & experienced firsthand, a lot of what works, what doesn’t work and what it takes to run a successful business.

One thing I do know is that it takes working long days and weeks, being paid last, taking the least amount of holidays, having sleepless nights, relying on bank loans and overdrafts, having the pain of managing your employees and customers alike. It doesn’t have to be this way – but it’s a choice you make – work harder and possibly earn less. Or work smarter and most probably earn more.

Either way, don’t lose sight of the fact that there’s more to life than owning and running a business. Cherish the moments doing the things that are important to you and to your family. Have fun. Be yourself. Be bold. Be brave. And become the entrepreneur that’s inside you – you really do owe it to yourself.

I wish you all the success you deserve and so much more!

Shaz NawazThe Profits Wizard

3 key success drivers to help build and manage your businessA business is like looking after a child or a pet. It comes with responsibility. In order to fulfill your responsibility a key ingredient you need is the right information. That’s because without the right information you can forgive yourself for not acting responsibly, although your customers, your business and your bank balance may not be as forgiving! However, when you have the right information then you’re compelled to act. And that action, driven by the right knowledge enables you to become responsible.

The best way to have the requisite information is to have a handle on your numbers, some call this data, others call it information. Irrespective of what you call it, you must collate the necessary and important numbers in your business.

Once you have a reasonable amount of data (at least 6 months worth in my experience) then you’ll start to see a story develop. The data will show you the correlations and the implications of your actions. The data will tell you what to do and what not to do.

“Shaz is our accountant and business coach.

His guidance has had a massive impact on how we run our

business...we cannot recommend Shaz and his team highly enough.”

Jon Boys CEO at The VA Partnership Limited

As the Management gurus at McKinsey said “What can be measured , can be managed”. So, it follows that the opposite would therefore be true, if it can’t be measured, it can’t managed. Furthermore, if you don’t measure it then you certainly don’t have much chance of managing it.

So, the important issue is to ensure you pick key areas in your business which you want to manage in a better way. If you find that something can’t be measured for whatever reason; find a new metric for measuring it. Or think of another way of tracking it.

KPIs are the important numbers you must measure in your business But what are KPIs?

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. These are the numbers you measure which will help you work towards your goal. They must be quantifiable and measureable. A typical example of a KPI would be measuring the number of new customers you sign up every month. Another one could be measuring total debt owed to the company – this could also be tracked as debtor days; the average amount of days a debt is outstanding.

This is how you could see it

KPIs should also be seen as Key Predictive Indicators. This is because what you’re trying to do is predict the future performance of your business. You predict what you think a certain number should be by the end of each period – this could be daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. I would suggest weekly or monthly. The more often you track, the more the opportunities you’re giving yourself to succeed. If you’re tracking your numbers weekly then you’ve got 52 opportunities to achieve the predicted number. If you were tracking it monthly then you’d only be giving yourself 12 opportunities to achieve the same result.

Your prediction should be based on past performance plus your return on monies spent on marketing. The more you sow in marketing, the more you should reap back. Although it doesn’t always work like this because testing and tweaking has a cost to it. It is essential to track the Reture on investment on each form of marketing to know which methods work best for you so that rather than an expensive scattergun approach, you have a focused cost effective campaign that you can build on and improve.

Measurement is a vital function. This is because the mere act of measuring something over a period of time causes change. A great example is if you were looking to lose weight. You could measure your weight on, say, a daily basis. But if you weren’t taking any corrective action to improve the reading on the scales then you’d be seeing a number which you’re not happy with. After a period of measuring but not taking action you’ll come to realise that you’ll get the results if you do something beyond just measuring your weight.

This will certainly compel you to exercise more or improve your diet. That’s because measurement causes and influences you to take action.

What this means is that action is the key. Practical application is the single biggest factor which will mean something will happen. Action leads to results – be it the results you were looking for – or results which need to improve. Continuous action leads to consistent and better results.

Prediction leads to success

Success is contagious. It’s also addictive. Once you start to see results you build in confidence. You start to believe that you can achieve more. Something which was once the ceiling for you now becomes the new floor – this is the new platform upon which you create further success.

As such, KPIs should be seen as Key Success Drivers (KSDs). These KSDs can be broken down into 3

areas:

Key Sales Drivers

These are drivers which help you to improve & increase your overall sales.

Key Cost Drivers

These are drivers which help you to control and reduce your costs

Key Success Drivers

These are drivers which help you track the”soft” numbers in your business. These are usually the numbers which will help your business become successful in the long-term.

To illustrate the power of tracking these numbers. And to demonstrate how they work, I’ll share three 3 stories with you.

Sales is a numbers game which needs to be played right…Key Sales Drivers in action

Adam’s Cash & Carry is a multi-million pound turnover business based in Peterborough. They supply goods to retail and wholesale businesses. Their customers tend to be in the food and drink industry or linked to the catering trade.

The business opened its doors in 2003. A big driving factor for the owner, Abdul Aziz, was that he was tired of being let down by his suppliers. Aziz, as he likes to be known, owned a local take-away and he struggled to find suppliers who were consistent in both service and price.

The frustration of uncertainly pushed him to start his own cash & carry business. Aziz was clear on his purpose – he wanted to offer a reliable solution to businesses in the catering trade. After all he’d been one of them. Aziz knew the challenges & frustrations that his customers were facing with other suppliers.

In 2011 Aziz attended a seminar organised by aa Chartered Accountants. It was a based on a case study of a small roofing contractor, who manages to generate an additional £2.2 million through a 25 year career – mainly through making more sales and saving costs.

The story of the roofing business resonated with Aziz and he appointed aa Chartered Accountants to look after his affairs. Aziz committed to our Platinum accountancy package, which includes regular board-view meetings based on the Business One Page Plan (see end of report for details).

Neil Baird Managing Director at Neat Electrical Solutions

The Business One Page Plan is designed to measure and track the 3 specific drivers outlined above as Key Success Drivers and can include other numbers you feel are specific to your individual business needs.

“Shaz is really good at helping you believe the impossible in

your headis possible”

In the case of Adam’s Cash & Carry, the Key Sales Drivers were mapped around the business focusing on achieving a turnover in excess of £10 million by 2016. At that time the turnover of the business was £5.4 million. The target was both ambitious and challenging.

One of the first things was to map out the sales funnel. This is the journey a potential customer (prospect) takes before they become a customer. It includes everything from the first point of contact, meetings, telephone calls and all other activity which takes place up to the point where a prospect becomes a customer.

Aziz wanted to create a simple Sales Driver process. He wanted to track 4 key numbers:

1. No of meetings with prospects2. No of new customers (Gold and above) *3. Average value of orders from new customers (less than 3 months old)4. Average value of orders from existing customers (more than 3 months old)

These were the key metrics Aziz wanted a handle on. He clearly understood the fact that less is more when it comes to measuring key numbers. Although it is worth noting that the sales team had a more in-depth sales map. But for management purposes, Aziz felt there was no need to review the sales map. He was, of course, very right in his choice. The sale team were looking after all the minute details. All he needed was a high-level view of what was going on.

* There was one other variable which Aziz included when it came to tracking the number of new customers. Aziz had categorised the quality of each customer. This was done on an objective analysis based on pre-set criteria. The

4 categories were Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond.

A Diamond grade customer was an ideal customer for the business. These were the people who spent the most, they had a good business, they were busy, they valued customer service and they paid their bills on time.

The next best grade was Gold. These were customers who were pretty decent customers but they weren’t yet in the Diamond category for one reason or another. Aziz saw this as an opportunity. He knew that if he educated the Gold grade customers then he could convert them into becoming a Diamond customer. This was something his sales time were targeting under point number 4 in the Key Sales Driver; Average value of orders from existing customers (more than three months old).

Organic growth is the most cost effective way to grow your business, moving clients up the grading system means that they spend more and increase their loyalty to you. For example, when a Gold customer converts to Platinum, they naturally spend more money with Adam’s. This is because, generally speaking, happy and content customers tend to spend more money with their existing suppliers rather than shopping around.

One of the things which Aziz understands is that it is not just about price. Yes, there are some very price conscious people in the market but there are many other like minded businesses for whom reliability, quality products and superlative customer service are the deciding factors: people who understand the real importance of these intrinsic values and what they add to their own businesses: people who are prepared to pay a fair price for them.

By 2015 the business managed to increase its turnover to just over £10.4 million. A whole year earlier than the original challenging target. Aziz states that “part of the reason why we exceeded our target is that we were focused. We all knew what was expected of us. The process was clear and the team worked together to beat the targets.”

This is what Aziz says about the experience of working with aa Chartered Accountants:

“The first thing to say about working with aa is their staff are all very friendly and excellent at what they do. If you go to their office, they make you feel special and that they really

appreciate your business. Nothing is too much trouble and they are always available to you.

You get a real feeling of confidence; you trust the people and the process you are following. The One Page Plan in particular has been excellent for our business.

The magical growth in my profits is truly amazing. I’m so glad I joined aa Chartered Accountants– it’s the best move I made.”

Aziz’s story is not uncommon when it comes to working with aa Chartered Accountants. There are numerous businesses who have managed to outperform their targets. If you’d like to see how you could do the same then please see the offer at the end of this report. It’s a no-brainer if you’re looking to grow your business; be it turnover, profits, or both.

Shaz presents Abdul Aziz with a Kindle as athank you gift for referring 2 new clients in one month.

It’s important to run a tight ship – controlling your costs is a key element in making this happenKey Cost Drivers

Steve Gilbert Building Services was established since 1995. It is a run by husband and wife team, Steve & Christine Gilbert and its main focus is grade 2 listed projects. They also manage jobs linked with extensions and erecting new buildings. Steve & Christine were introduced to aa Chartered Accountants by a local Independent Financial Adviser. They came to a seminar and were impressed with what they saw. They swiftly decided that they needed to work with aa Chartered Accountants.

The challenge the business faced was having a lean process when it came to completing jobs. This meant completing jobs efficiently and ensuring they made a profit on each project.

Another challenge was managing debt. Customers did not always pay on time. However,

building merchants wanted paying for materials and the team wanted paying on time. The owners needed to understand how to track key costs so that they could control them and become a much leaner and profitable business. In order to do this we tracked a number of KPIs:

1. Total debt and debtor days2. Work In Progress3. Cost of materials4. Team costs

By focusing on debtor days and the total debt owed, the owners were able to manage and control cash flow. Debtor days came down from 33.5 days to 7.4 days. Total debt was controlled and reduced to a much lower and workable number. This gives Christine the peace of mind that she needs as she manages the cash flow in the business.

The next focus was to ensure that each job was profitable and was managed efficiently. We tracked the profitability per job. The two main KPIs here were monies spent on materials and total salary costs. Again, by tracking, measuring and taking corrective action, the owners were able to better manage these costs.

With job efficiency, a number of jobs were taking longer to complete than expected. This sometimes resulted from what is called “snagging” in the industry. “Snagging” can be caused by a number of factors such as materials not arriving as promised, or they are defective and need to be returned and re ordered: customers requesting changes or additions to the original project, the results are the same, the project overruns and impacts on other projects. Though this is a common occurrence in building trade, it is not easy to factor it in to your costs or timetable.

The effect of this was that the final invoice could not be raised. A customer would not want to pay their last invoice simply because the job had not been fully completed. The best way to track this was to look at Work In Progress. Steve & Christine were already tracking this but were not taking action on the numbers.

We decided on a clear course of action. We set up weekly meetings with two of the site managers, with the main purpose being to discuss existing and on-going projects. This gave the site managers a better picture of progress and focused their attention on the issues, giving them ownership and accountably for getting jobs finished within the deadlines agreed. This enabled them to support Steve & Christine with their objectives to grow the business. Over a reasonably short period of time Work In Progress started coming down, jobs were being completed efficiently and profitability per job improved.

Through these weekly meetings, Steve & Christine were fully aware of what was going on with each job. They enabled them to better manage expectations of their customers. It also enabled them to manage and control cash flow.

This is what Steve & Christine say about the experience of working with aa Chartered Accountants:

Shaz presents Steve & Christine witha Cross pen as a thank you gift

for referring a new client.

“The One Page Plan changed our perspective!

It has increased accountability across the business and has made us realise what we thought was best practice

was actually holding the business back. It has caused us to challenge what and why we do things, has increased the

profit levels we achieve in every contract and has helped us increase our turnover.

The availability of the team at aa, even just for a chat has

been invaluable.”

Success comes through dedicated and committed actionKey Success Drivers

Peterborough Recliner Centre is a business which specialises in providing quality sofas, chairs & beds and in particular those with the facility to recline. A large section of their customer base are often of a more mature age, or people with mobility or health issues. The purchase of the correct recliner to suit their individual needs can require additional help, support, understanding and information.

The business is run by father and son team Don & Michael Brisbourne. They were introduced to aa Chartered Accountants by their bank manager when they purchased the business back in 2011.

Prior to buying the business, Michael had over 25 years experience in the furniture business through his time spent employed by a national chain. Don was in retirement, after a long, illustrious, globetrotting career in senior management with one of the country’s leading multi-nationals.

Bernard Lambert Managing Director at The Template Company

Michael always had the aspiration to run his own business, and Don was keen to support Michael in his endeavor.

Having met with Michael and Don it was evident that Michael was both ambitious and serious about growing the business. This positive attitude fitted in well with they type of client who we can work with on the Business One Page Plan.

“I would heartily recommend Shaz at AA Accountants.Not just regular financial

accountants but a real asset to a business with fantastic help

and advice to substantially grow your profits”

The focus on the key success drivers was to gather feedback from customers. This would help Michael and Don ensure they were giving excellent service, something they were both very passionate and committed to. It also helped them ensure customers were happy. This meant they would come back in the future and they would refer others to the business. We tracked the following KPIs:

1. Number of feedback forms completed2. Average score on feedback forms3. Teams ideas on improving the business4. Number of referrals received

We designed a simple yet very effective customer feedback form. Three key questions we asked were:

1. How delighted are you with the overall service? *2. How likely are you to recommend us?3. Is there anyone you can recommend?

*Don and Michael didn’t just want happy customers they wanted delighted customers.

Through regular meetings, we were able to track and measure the results. We were able to look at the feedback and make improvements to the business.

Dave Grundy Proprietor at Tuit Achievements

The business has increased turnover year on year & profits are up as a direct result. We have continued to encourage & support Michael and Don as they have focused and tracked other areas of the business such as costs. Don is extremely happy that he has a real and valuable handle on the numbers that drive the business, leaving Michael free to concentrate his expertise and talents on increasing sales and customer satisfaction. This is a real success story of a family business.

“Shaz is one of the most proactive listeners I know.He allows his actions and results to do his talking.”

This is what Don & Michael say about the experience of working with aa Chartered Accountants:

“Working with aa Chartered Accountants and the One Page Plan has allowed us to focus on the things that really matter in our business.

They have been an invaluable part of our team and their advice, which is always happily given,

has really assisted us in growing our business.

We would highly recommend working with aa Chartered Accountants, to anyone looking to focus their business and increase their bottom line.”

Your Next Steps

As you will have established, the Business One Page Plan is a high effective and powerful tool. It will help you focus and increase your sales just like it did for Aziz.

It will also enable you to become more productive and efficient just like it did for Steve & Christine. And it will help you improve your profits just like it did for Don & Michael.

No one can guartantee that you’ll achieve exactly the same results as any of the businesses mentioned above. But what is guaranteed is that if you focus on the right numbers then you’ll get the right results – it takes time and commitment but you’ll get there.

The added benefit of working with aa Chartered Accountants is that we offer you a cast-iron 100% money back guarantee. So, if you feel we dont add real value to youir business the we will refund your money.

You now have 3 choices:

Do nothing. This would be the worst thing you could do. If you carry on doing the same thing then at best all you can hope for is the same result .

Build your own BOPP. If you’d like to do this then please email Shaz on shaz@aa-accountants.co.uk and request a standard BOPP layout spreadsheet. You can then design your own living document and make a start

You can meet with Shaz to see how he can help you achieve your business goals. This is usually linked to generating bigger profits, more cash and building a business which has greater capital value.

The great opportunity with the third option is that it won’t cost you anything for an initial consultation. However, through that consulation you’ll be able to gauge if Shaz can help you and your business just like he has done so for the people above alongside many others (see case studies on www.aa-accountants.co.uk/case-studies/)

You’ll leave the meeting with at least 3 key ideas which will help you grow and improve your business.

Whatever you do don’t go for option one. That’s the option people choose when they don’t know any better. You’ve invested the time in reading this report. You know know better so the action you take should be better too.

Whether you choose option 2 or 3, we wish you the very best with your endeavors.

With kindest regards

Shaz NawazThe Profits Wizard

PS Why not connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. My details are:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaznawazTwitter: https://twitter.com/aa_accountants

I look forward to connecting with you!

PPS I post a weekly blog which can be read on www.aa-accountants.co.uk/blog/. The blog posts are easy to read and they always have a key business message. I keep them short and to the point because I know you are busy and I want to get the key message over to you in a short and sharp manner.