Outsourcing–Maintaining | Extraordinary Business

How to maintain highly profitable relationships with your outsourcing partners

Buyer's RemorseAnyone who has purchased anything in the past probably has experienced buyer’s remorse – the sense of regret after making a purchase.  When working with your outsourcing partner, that is the last thing you want.  Therefore, you must set and manage expectations, and like you would with your employees, review their work, praise them for their accomplishments or take the appropriate action for not meeting your expectations.

Keep in mind – your outsourced partners are to bring their expertise to your business to enable your businesses to achieve some success or factors of success that you could not achieve otherwise.  Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure that they live up to it.  Here are five ways to ensure you are managing your partners appropriately.

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Outsourcing–Setting Expectations | Extraordinary Business

How to make sure that you are getting the value you want out of your outsourcing partner.

Successful outsourcingThe goal of outsourcing is to take have someone or some firm take over the responsibility of some activity or activities in your firm.  This could be anything from manufacturing to product design to bookkeeping, marketing, etc.. As a result of outsourcing, your firm should be able to state some gains such as:

  • Lower startup costs
  • Lower manufacturing costs
  • Greater efficiency
  • Higher quality of work
  • Greater capacity
  • etc.

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Outsourcing Strategically| Extraordinary Business

The ‘make or buy’ method of filling your business needs.

Outsourced Services“Outsourcing is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get,” could have been a line from Winston Grooms’ 1986 novel “Forrest Gump.”  While businesses consider the idea of working with outsourced partners, many don’t know how much they should be paying for what they are receiving and how to ensure that they are getting value for the money they are spending.

Your job, as a business leader, is to increase your company’s profit.  Bottom line.  That means that your best interest is in focusing on the things that move you closer to profitability, which is the production, sale and delivery of profitable goods and services.  When you have to focus on other things, such as administrative tasks, marketing, etc., you are effectively taking your eye off the ball.  If you are a growing company, you know how essential each moment you have is; time is not forgiving and wasted time cannot be refunded.

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Filling Your Pipeline | Extraordinary Business

Building a Successful Lead Generation Strategyimage

Since Aepiphanni opened in 2005, I have had a lot of time to evaluate the small business marketplace.  I’ve heard a lot of talks, attended workshops, read articles and the like on lead generation.  Many people have told me that there are certain, specific things that have to be done in a very specific way that everyone is doing and therefore, I should do it, too.

My frustration has always been that “if everyone else is doing it, there is nothing unique about my approach, therefore, my results cannot be more than mediocre.”  It appears like fishing for trout in a shark tank – everyone is trying to get the trout – including the sharks, so success has got to be dismal at best.

Simply put: this method isn’t sustainable, so I “went to work.”

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Close More Deals | Extraordinary Business

Components of a Successful Sales System

According to Dave Kahle, of the Kahle Way, a sales system is “a set of principles, processes, strategies and tools that are put into place to bring the company results day-in and day-out.”

Steps in the processEssentially, what this means is that the company has a specific set of steps to find, nurture and convert leads into sales.  The problems that many businesses face are two-fold:

  1. They have no specific process or tools in place to do get sales (no sales system) and all of the sales people do seems is right in their own eyes
  2. They use a single tactic to find and pursue leads

By not having a specific process and set of tools in place, it is very difficult to predict what your sales might be and to tell what is actually working.

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Increasing Sales | Extraordinary Business

Why businesses need to take a strategic approach to building their sales systems.

Increasing sales is nearly always a topic of conversation when we work with business owners.  Business leaders constantly seek out ways to connect with their audiences in such a way that people are willing to buy.  With the recent recession, many consumers’ buying habits have changed.

imageCustomers purchase based on a number of criteria; pricing and promotion are not the sole drivers of sales, except in the commodity markets where there is little differentiation between products and mass marketing is the norm.  Typically  companies will use techniques such as the loss leader – a product priced artificially low to get you to come to a store and hope that you will purchase other items while there, coupons, sales fliers, unique products such as high quality store-brand products, etc..

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Dynamic by Design | Extraordinary Business

Design businesses to adapt and innovate through marketplace changes.

imageThe pace of business is maddening.  This is nothing new, certainly not an Aepiphanni.  The question is: knowing that the business marketplace is so dynamic, how do you make sure that your company is dynamic enough to meet those needs, to stay competitive and to stay afloat?

This is the challenge faced by many, if not all businesses.  Those at the top stay focused on staying at the top.  Those right below those at the top constantly strive to reach the top.  (The top could be top of their market, industry, niche, geography, etc.; whatever is most appropriate for your business.) Being at the top means that not only are you able to change, but you can predict or perhaps even create the changes in the marketplace.

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