Released on: March 14, 2008, 7:42 am

Press Release Author: Gaurav Walia

Industry: Management

Press Release Summary: As a business coach I specialize in asking questions. The
right question asked at the right time can affect your business future more than you
can imagine. It has the power to completely and instantly shift your mental
activity, your entire thought pattern, and ultimately the actions you take. Over the
last fourteen years I\'ve asked hundreds of small, medium and very large business
owners endless questions which have helped them achieve far greater levels of
success than they would have had thinking the way they were -- only moments before


Press Release Body: As a business coach I specialize in asking questions.

The right question asked at the right time can affect your business future more than
you can imagine. It has the power to completely and instantly shift your mental
activity, your entire thought pattern, and ultimately the actions you take. Over the
last fourteen years I\'ve asked hundreds of small, medium and very large business
owners endless questions which have helped them achieve far greater levels of
success than they would have had thinking the way they were -- only moments before
.

While the following may not be the only ten questions -- or even THE ten questions,
they are ten questions that you must answer if you want your business to flourish.
The right answers are critical to your company\'s future.

1. How many un- or underserved prospective clients are in your target market?

The number of prospective clients - prospects -- available to you relates to two key
considerations: the total revenue possible from this client base, and what kinds of
marketing tactics will be most cost-effective. If yours is a \'mass market,\'
advertising will almost certainly be part of the marketing mix. By contrast, if your
market is very small (I once sold software to the top-50 international banks) you
can contact each and every prospect individually.

2. How large do you envision your business?

Does your vision include being a Fortune 500 company? If so, check question 1 above,
and make sure you\'ve got a whopping market. On the other hand, many of my clients
would be completely satisfied generating $5MM with a staff of 50; pocketing $1mm per
year and selling the company for $10mm when they are ready. How you answer this
question governs the kind of markets you can enter, whether you are vertical or
horizontal in nature, mass market or niched, as well as the kind of management
structure your organization requires.

3. What important changes are occurring (or have recently occurred) in your market
and what is their impact on your business?

The answers to this question may govern changes to your product, your product mix
and your marketing campaign. Big changes generally signal big opportunities; however
if you aren\'t prepared for them, they can also signal the demise of your business.
Dramatic increases in new housing created significant opportunities for a client who
sold estimating software and brought a field-ready, cost-saving product to market
just in time.

4. Who is your competition and why are you clearly a better choice for your prospects?

It may shock you (on the other hand, it may not) how many CEOs cannot provide a
compelling answer to this question. Recently, I was at a meeting for Microsoft
Business Solutions Partners, and spoke to a number of the VARs who came to improve
their marketing programs. When I asked about their competitive advantage, three
separate resellers answered telling me how long they had been in business, and how
well they understood their customers. Yeah? Well, so what. If you don\'t want to get
blindsided by your competitors, you need to understand their capabilities. And if
you want to outflank them in turn, you\'d better have ammunition more powerful than
your length of service.

5. How important is \"service\" to your clients, and how do you plan to deliver it?

Some markets require high service, some do not. What about yours? If you are playing
in a market where customers expect to get their hands held, you need to be geared up
for it. A software company client of mine implemented a large and effective sales
push, only to have their Help Desk swamped with new customer service requests.
Ultimately we fixed this with a set of new support policies, a knowledge base, an
active user forum, plus effective staff training -- but it almost sank the company.

6. Is your business model scalable? In other words, could you grow your business by
50%, without your expenses growing by the same ratio?

If not, you can never be any more profitable -- in percentage terms - than you
currently are. You may sell more, and earn more in absolute terms, but for each
dollar you sell, you will make the same, and probably less, money. This means a
potential acquirer will not pay a financial premium for your business, because
adding money to your business won\'t make it more profitable.

7. What are they 3-5 critical factors for your business\' success and how would you
rate your company in each factor?

Where do the profits in your business come from? What are the areas where you beat
the pants off your competitors? Why do clients seek you out? These are the critical
areas of success -- and you\'d better be damned good at them. Rate yourself on each,
and create an improvement program wherever you are lower than an 8. I\'ve done this
exercise with many of my business coaching clients, and it has probably created more
value than any other.

8. What portion of your business operations have documented, repeatable, scalable
systems? Are there systems which cover the critical success areas?

This is the solution to the problem raised in question 6. It is also your ticket to
a well-earned vacation. Ask yourself, if you left for four weeks without voice mail
or e-mail, would your business be better than you found it, about the same, or a
smoldering ruin? You may think that not all areas of a software company lend
themselves to systemization, but all the important ones do. Sales? Marketing?
Product development? Customer service? Consulting? All systemizable.

9. How good are your finances?

Your financial picture and your market share, analyzed in the context of a growing
or shrinking market determines the future of your company. If you\'ve got lots of
surplus cash you can weather anything. You can create completely new products if you
have to. Next best thing is strong cash flow out of which you can pay for
development, buy a competitor, or expand revenues with new technology. (One of my
clients recently reinvigorated their business by buying a non- competitive player
selling products to their legal clients.) But if your bank account is poor and your
cash-flow weak, you are in a tough place -- particularly if your market is
shrinking. My Grand Strategy Model would tell you to sell your company for whatever
you can get, and invest the proceeds in a healthier market sector.

10. Is your market growing or shrinking, and what is your current market share?

This is the other key to the Grand Strategy. If you dominate your market is there
enough room to grow? And if not, who can you steal business from? If your market is
expanding there may be years of growth left, but if it is stable or shrinking, the
forecast may not be so good. This is where cash balances and cash flow come in. With
them you can develop new products and services to expand the size of purchase
transactions or increase the frequency of repurchase. If there is just no room for
increase, think about how you can tweak your product to redeploy it in an adjacent
market space. At a time when a client\'s customer\'s just wasn\'t buying their old
products, (and recently, whose customer\'s were?) we shifted much of their resources
into providing interim services, and thereby saved the company until the new
products came out.


If you are concerned about questions 5, 6, 7, and 8 above, I have developed a new,
comprehensive and first-of-its-kind program to help: The Turnkey Your Business Home
Study and Mentoring Program. (http://www.turnkeycoach.com) This is a twelve month
hands-on course, containing step-by-step how-to manuals, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, monthly
conference calls and personal mentoring and is the only program of its kind in the
world, designed to help entrepreneurs and executives create detailed, documented
systems and processes to \"turnkey\" their businesses.

This is the one guaranteed way for you to create duplicable business processes for
those things that matter most, and then optimize those same things getting the
greatest return on your efforts and your time.


Web Site: http://www.greatindustrialguide.com

Contact Details: punjab
SCO111 10Phase Mohali
01725091197
prince5051@gmail.com