Realign Your Business – Preparatory Exercise
Hang Ups Hamstring Your Business
The simple truth is that as a business owner your own biases and fears limit you from being able to create more value with less time and for more reward.
It is not a dirty concept for you to be paid more to do less of the wrong things to create more value for the people you serve.
However, before we progress any further with the realignment of your business, let us first agree that we should be taking a completely objective review of your situation, your clients, and how you create value for them.
Your fears and emotions as they relate to changing what you are doing for your clients and how you charge for your value, really need to be set aside for now as obstacles to making rational decisions.
So, I’m going to be brutally honest with you, there is not a service business owner I have ever encountered that does not have a whole bunch of hang ups that relate to their perception of value and how they deliver it to their clients (myself included).
If you believe otherwise then you have fooled yourself into a false perception, which means that you will be unable to rationally view your situation, your business, and a pathway to delivering more value to yourself and your clients.
Trust The Process
We are only here to help you reach your own answers, we are not here to make you do anything you do not wish to. We are, however, here to challenge you to rethink the lines you have drawn in the sand, to push your boundaries on what you believe your value is, and to give you the tools to completely realign your business in a fundamental way.
We will take you through a process of looking at your business, your client base, rethinking how you deliver value, and how you charge for it. We will question you about your assumptions of value and we will challenge you on what it is possible to charge for and to do for the people you serve.
Please answer the following questionnaire and choose the answer that best fits your situation. There is no right or wrong answer, however the combination of your answers in context of other aspects of your business review
Compile Your Client Base
Most services businesses will already have some method they use to review their client and services list. We also find that most will have used spreadsheets to do this.
For that reason, we are asking you to compile a list of your clients into a spreadsheet as a means to take you through a component of your review process.
However, because you will all have different access to information and may already have your own method for doing this we are not providing a template. This will allow you to work with what you already have.
Before you read any further, please don’t get hung up on exactly how you put together this spreadsheet i.e. we want you to do it your way. The objective is simply to be able to see your client list and what they are paying for. You will get added benefit for adding detail that will give you insight into their ability to pay for more value than you are already providing (however this can come later if needed, so start with the basics.)
The more information you have in your spreadsheet the better your final review process will be, so, you may choose to go into as much detail as you like depending on your resources and ability ahead of the workshop. However for the purpose of this exercise here is the minimum detail that will be needed in your spreadsheet.
- Client Identifier (Remove full details if you wish us to review it with you)
- Revenue received by type i.e. Mortgage Trail, Plan Fees, Insurance, Retainer etc…
- Some means of classification for the service provided (If you provide service packages etc…)
- Break them into bands if you already segment your clients i.e. A Clients, B Clients etc…
Other types of information that may be advantageous for later reference (i.e. include this type of information now if you can do so). Which types of extra information you include will depend on your particular business.
- Age
- Income (can be broken into types if business owners)
- AUM (Assets Under Management)
- AUA (Assets Under Advice)
- Net worth
- Loan, sum insured amounts etc…
- Business Turnover
- Business Profit
Lastly, we strongly suggest that you make your spreadsheet a cloud document. That is to say you use Microsoft 365 for Excel or Google Sheets so that your document is in the cloud as opposed to being saved on your computer.
An alternate method would be to use desktop Excel and to save your document in Dropbox.
The reason for this is so that you can share it with us at The Social Adviser. You may even choose to share it with your peers for input (although there is no requirement to do so).
Additionally, you will be referring to this spreadsheet throughout the workshop and making changes as you proceed, so make this a working copy that is separate to what you may already be using as a business tool.