Business Building

It is highly unusual to find a business these days that does not need up to date IT to run smoothly.  Anywhere there is an office environment there is IT.  Even if you sell gravel and aggregates for mending road surfaces, the most non-IT sort of business in the world, IT plays a role and will require an appropriate investment to keep functioning smoothly.

Even if you have never had to do this in your business before, no matter how much you resent taking on a new line item for expenses on your P&L, it does not change the business realities.  Just make sure that you get good advice, and that your expenditures are wisely budgeted and appropriate to your businesses and your industry's needs.  Just because you have been successful in business so far, does not mean that the same good fortune will always be extended to you.

Many businesses in the small and medium business market though, no longer need to have internal people to handle IT - these folks rapidly get out of date and can leave at any time with all of your systems knowledge in their head.  Dangerous.  Most businesses, even as large as 300-500 employees are now engaging external IT firms that offer Managed Services - remote management of your network and systems for a fixed monthly fee.  Some of these IT firms will even own all of the IT systems on their books and keep them refreshed on a regular basis.  Off the Balance Sheet and onto your P&L.  Finally, IT can now be something strategic that is a stable and predictable line item on the P&L statement!

Owners of business are often (understandably) focused on just keeping the enterprise running and trying to grow it - and this seems to take all of their available time and resources.  They do not have significant amounts of excess funds to pay for multiple advisors to keep them up to speed on the less immediate aspects of owning a business.  They also do not have appreciable quantities of time to mingle with their peers or research what areas of business ownership they may be ignorant of.

This almost Catch-22 scenario lends itself to the majority of business owners running a gauntlet of risk that is much greater than they would agree to take on.  Especially if they knew the whole range of scenarios that have played out in the businesses of many other owners who are just like them.  This is especially relevant to business owners that have made significant personal sacrifices to make it through the tough times – as they may not realize how much they are flirting with any number of disasters.

Many people though take an almost superstitious approach to risk.  They do not wish to delve into the details of the range of potentially negative scenarios, because to do so seems to almost invite these scenarios to manifest into their lives.  Instead they want to focus on the "upside", or "look in the direction that they want to go in", or focus their energies on what they want rather than what they don't want, …..and then they just hope that nothing devastating will come at them out of this self imposed blind spot.

I have seen owners build businesses to a decent size only to find out that their company name has since been adopted by so many others in the same or a similar industry that they have no brand to speak of.  I have seen business owners die and their business partners suddenly find themselves in business with the surviving spouse who has no relevant business skills or industry understanding, yet the other partners had put in place no means through which to buy the person out in case of this eventuality.

A hugely popular scenario, and a very understandable one to find yourself in, is to be over dependant on one customer, or one industry or geography.  What would you do if 50-75% of your revenue disappeared almost overnight because something changed?  It is one thing to be aware of this risk, in principle, and to know that you really should get around to do something about it.  It is entirely another thing to actually do something about it, and then find out that your enterprise is all the stronger for having done it.

What a tragedy – to sacrifice and do everything that it takes to build the business, expecting and hoping that it would all be worthwhile one day …only to have some unexpected event take it all away from you….

Perhaps the most misunderstood small business sales tool is networking.  I have seen competent and capable sales people waste away by spinning their wheels in unsuccessful attempts at networking and all the while believing that they were keeping busy and keeping their schedule full of activity that was bound to pay off.

What it takes is focus.  I mean, how do you get married?  Not by dating everyone in town and dedicating only on one or two occasions to each.  You focus and commit and dig in over time.

This is sales, not sales avoidance.  It takes putting out before you expect anything back.  Above all it takes time - and often company sales managers or owners are not willing to take the risk that a new sales person is doing this.  Why?  Well, how long does it take to find out if they have been doing the right thing?  For a long sales cycle business it can be about 6-12 months.  Or more.  How much salary and benefits has that cost them?  Tens of thousands.

These decision makers fall into two groups - Those who are over eager to cut and run at the first suspicion of an investment that has not paid off.  The others are those who will ride the losers all the way to the poor house in the mistaken belief that time will tell and the harvest is just around the next corner (they themselves are scared of losing).