How does your profit compare to what it was five years ago? Over the last couple of years we have all had challenges in business.

Your profit margin trend is the single most powerful indicator of your company's health and value. As margins are squeezed, businesses tend to cut their sales and marketing efforts. Manufacturers postpone plant upgrades and delay research and development. This helps in the short term, but it also reduces business fitness, capability and memory. Businesses become out of date.

It becomes a lot less fun to own a business. Obviously, something needs to be done.

Business fitness

Your ability to get things done quickly and effectively and the energy to seek and jump on opportunities declines when you don't keep on to it. You become sluggish, a couch potato of the sales and marketing world. To get back up to peak fitness you need to work at it. And you need a goal.

Many businesses have been in survival mode with the weight of the recession on their shoulders, looking down at their feet. It's time to look up and set some realistic goals for you and your business. Then develop a 'training plan' to get your business fit enough to step to the challenge and goal.

Capability

One of the travesties I have seen in recent months is a business who got their biggest order in over 2 years. Back then they were able to deliver, but now, they are not. They have survived well but they have lost capability and skill. Fitness is one thing, but businesses still need the skills, processes and equipment to deliver.

Some businesses will have to learn how to run again. As with building fitness, you need a plan to learn or relearn what your business needs to be able to do if your are to grow.

Memory

Use it or lose it they say. We know this is true for ourselves, but it's also true for businesses. For reasons only you will know your business will have 'forgotten' how to do certain things. This may be as simple as how to send out quarterly newsletters to customers or as complex as how to develop new product and service lines. If it's already gone, you have work to do.

Out of Date

Once we are out of date we are no longer competitive. It's like a joke being told at the table and we no longer get it, we are not current enough to see why it's funny.

So what do we do now?   

1. Set goals that we can achieve and plan
2. Build our fitness in the areas that will be required to achieve the goal we have set.
3. Review skills, processes, equipment requirements to ensure we are able to deliver
4. Protect our knowledge and our memory. Don't let it slip and stay fresh

Finally, find the magic again. It will be hard to gain momentum again but the rewards are worth it. I'm continually amazed at the passion, energy and tenacity that my client exhibit and it's great when I see them running fast.

For further information on the above article, please contact catriona.knapp@whk.co.nz