If you aren’t growing perhaps you’re dying?

Any business that is constantly trying to do what they do better has to be well on the way to success. This attitude is one that any customer notices the minute they walk into a business, just as they notice a business that simply doesn’t care. So how does a business constantly improve?

There are so many ways I don’t know how to start. We can improve the way we communicate with our clients, we can make it easier for people to buy from us, we can keep working on the appearance of our business ensuring it is always clean and tidy but also fresh and modern, we can train our staff, we can be at the forefront of product knowledge on what we sell and we can have an open mind that lets us look for new and better ways to run our business.

When you are committed to constant and never ending improvement it really does show. This attitude rubs off on our staff who start to look for ways to do things better as well. Customers are more likely to come to you with ideas to improve your business because you clearly care enough to listen to what they have to say. Suppliers note this attitude and are more likely to want to help you grow your business, perhaps giving you new products to try, special deals or even just extra support when you need it. And your competitors will respect you.

In my mind these are all very good characteristics for a growing business. However, the most important area that needs constant and never ending improvement is you.

As a business owner we need to commit to learning new skills, to look for ways to do what we do as individuals ever better, to research our industry and be a leader in this industry, to read and broaden our knowledge on a range of subjects that will help our businesses to grow, to be trained in areas that make us better leaders and to always be open minded enough to find new ways to do things.

With this comes a degree of flexibility that is a key component in the overall BULLETPROOFING strategy. Any business that isn’t committed to becoming better all the time is ultimately going to die off. Just as any business that is too rigid to change, or too lazy to change or too bored to change will face the same fate.

Committing to constant and never ending improvement adds an air of passion and excitement to a business. In my mind, this is the fuel that powers a business to true success.

Last week I had a break in Tasmania – and what a great holiday destination it is. I love being a tourist, sitting back and enjoying what is going on around me. It is also great time to reflect and observe and I get some of my most innovative ideas when I am in this relaxed state of mind.

As I was checking out of a wonderful hotel in Cradle Mountain, Lemonthyme Lodge, the receptionist handed me a bag. I asked her what it was and she said it was a travel pack compliments of the resort. It contained a couple of bottles of water and some apples. She explained that every person visiting Lemonthyme has to drive to get there so they felt it was a nice gesture to make the return journey for their guests a little more enjoyable.

How impressive is this? Something for free and something practical. It may sound like such a simple gesture, and it is, but when was the last time you stayed in a hotel or a motel and they gave you something like this? In fact it is generally the opposite – businesses are giving less away, in fact many are getting down right mean. Sadly it shows.

This is yet again a sensational opportunity for any business, from the largest to the smallest, to really stand out from the crowd by being generous with their customers. Be prepared to give a bit, show your customers that you appreciate them and that you know they have a choice and they have chosen you.

Standing out from the crowd and getting people talking about your business is not about the big things – it is all about the little things. Find ways that you can do more of the little things for your customers and they will tell everyone and they will be loyal for as long as you keep it up. Don’t become mean and stingy out of fear of the global financial crisis, look at it as the best opportunity to be better than your competition, for once and all.

Small things are big in the world of business.

I have never been much of an “attention to detail” kind of person when it comes to financial figures. In my early days as a business owner my record keeping would literally be taking a shoe box full of receipts and cheque stubbs to my poor accountant once every few years (hard to imagine that I had issues with the Taxation department isn’t it?).

I had no idea about cash flow, account reconciliation, profit and loss or balance sheets. I bumbled my way around these things for almost twenty years. I never had accurate figures, my accounting was simply adding up money in and money out in my bank account or seeing how much was in the till at the end of the day. Of course I couldn’t budget, I had no way to manage money and I never knew how much anything cost.

I didn’t realise how important this really was. My philosophy was always on the front end of the business. Focus on making money and as long as you make enough you wont have any problems. Unfortunately that is so wrong for so many reasons I don’t know where to start.

To be successful in business and to make your business as BULLETPROOF as possible you have to have access to accurate financial figures that are current as they can be. Ideally you need to know at the end of each day exactly what the financial position of your business is. You have to have complete faith in the figures being given to you either by an accountant or your bookkeeper. You have to know your debt position and all liabilities. Nothing is worse than getting a huge surprise bill that you didn’t know was coming.

Having accurate reports is great but they are of no value at all if you can’t read them or understand them. I make a point of getting my accountant to always explain financial reports. I read a lot of books and ask a lot of questions. I get copies of Public Company Annual Reports and read through page after page of figures to form my own opinion on the financial state of the business. I learnt how to make cash flow forecasts based on the payment history of my clients and so on.

My biggest realisation with all of this was that none of it is that complicated. All it takes is some effort and time to learn what the numbers mean. It won’t take long until you get to see mistakes on reports or pick up issues in your business that before you wouldn’t even have known about because your reports were not accurate enough to pick up this information.

Knowledge really is power, especially when it comes to figures and running a business. Numbers tell you so much about the state of your business. They tell you whether or not you are making money, something that is surprisingly hard to tell at times, how long any cash reserves will last, is your business growing, how quickly do you collect money and so on. A business with great records is always worth more than one with poor records, for obvious reasons.

I believe that it is impossible to BULLETPROOF any business if you don’t have accurate figures that you can understand, delivered to you as quickly as possible.