What can I do to ensure my business finishes the year the strongest it can?
– Everybody’s looking at where they are. We’re past the first half of the year getting ready for a strong close. Look at what you’re doing well. Focus on that first and see how you can repeat it and do more. Obviously look at what’s not performing, where you would like to do better. See what changes and fixes you can make. It’s a difficult time to make all the corrections that you might need but again if you have a plan and you know a budget that you’re aiming for, you clearly need to focus in on what’s not working so well. Maybe that’s just not gonna happen for you this year but amp up the area that is and that way you can focus on your successes. It’s all about spreading that success and that feeling of achievement with the team that will then breed more success and possibly enables you to hit your numbers by the end of the year if you’re falling behind. If you’re ahead, fantastic, but don’t get complacent. You still have to look at what could be a headwind for you in the second half of the year. Make sure you really know where the business is performing. That’s my best advice for you. And that way you’ll be successful. –
Q.2 I need to get my team motivated to bring their A-game. What are your suggestions for achieving this?
– Getting everybody on their A-game for sure is a very important thing. Ask everybody where they feel they’re really contributing to the business. Get them to fix any areas that they say they’re not performing to their optimal strength. It’s really about involving the team. Everybody will have an opinion and a suggestion and an idea. You should really take those thoughts on board because it is your team that’s gonna enable you to be successful and achieve your goals. So my best advice, have a meeting, sit down. Maybe it’s different departments that you need to split it out with. Look at their performance. You should be doing this anyway but particularly as you aim for a strong finish, get your team to tell you what they think they can do and that way you’ll know whether you’re gonna be on course for a good strong finish to the end of the year. –
Business planning sounds great, but I don’t have the time to get this done before the end of the year. Where should I start?
– Business planning is a difficult thing to do. Again, break it down. It’s really less daunting if you take smaller parts. Maybe you need to fix a certain thing in sales. Maybe there’s an issue with a form, something as simple as that that will potentially remove a blockage and enable your sales team to excel. So don’t try and boil the ocean as they say and try and fix everything at one time. That’s really not a good way to go. It’ll get frustrating for everybody. Try and fix the small stuff. Everybody will get a kick out of some quick wins. If there’s something that they’ve been longing for you to do as CEO that you haven’t done yet, get that off your list, don’t procrastinate. Anything you can do that will make people see yes, we’re making progress, even if it’s small, it makes a difference. And those things add up. So again, get with the team, look at what you can fix. Those things will really make a difference as you aim for a strong finish this year. Well, that’s all we have time for today. Thank you very much for sending in your questions. As always, you can find us at EagleBusinessCredit.com or on social media at #TheMoneyFactor. Send in your questions, would love to answer them for you. Until next time.