7 STEP OF CONSULTING PROCESS

Discovery- Get all data. Interview employees at all levels.

1. Discovery- Get all data. Interview employees at all levels.

• “The One Thing” – Identifying big problems.
• Current/Max volumes – Understanding capacity & avoiding bottlenecks.
• Marketing Evaluation – Cohesive? ROI’s, Systemized?, Consistent
• Salesforce Evaluation – Individual performance, _x_x_, systems, consistent?
• 10 P’s – Evaluate, listen to reviews.
• Cohesive Unit Evaluation
• Customer’s experience – Any reviews?, returns, policies, escalation policies
• Company Reputation – Online reputations, good/bad publicity, current PR strategy
• Incentives Alignment – Align incentives with customers experience
• Employee profiles – evaluations (Any 8,9,10′s?, work ethic, culture fit)
• Culture – Employee feedback, avg length of time w/ company
• Mission – Purpose of company, goals, motivations
• Ideal Clients – (Dream 100)
• Time Management Evaluations – Typical day for each member, personal evaluation
• Strategic Innovation – Strategic Innovation- How often? Policy? Procedure? Consistent? Future of current business model?
• Life Cycle- – Life Cycle- CEO stage in business & personal cycle of life, Business’ stage, market’s stage, product’s stage in the cycle of life.
• G 4 – Can you get the customers? Can you handle the business? Can you deliver a great product- flawlessly? Can you have them come back for more?
• Strategy/Marketing/Sales Makeover- – Growth, Branding, Marketing, Sales Process

2. Analysis– Identify the biggest threats, find biggest opportunities. Create solutions and best practices to limit the liabilities and take advantage of current opportunities.

3. Report- Document all of our findings and distribute to all key personnel who are privy to the information. Create a case study detailing specific causes of liabilities along with specific recommendations of action.

4. Strategize- Strategize with the board to determine which recommendations to implement, alter, or abandon. Determine what resources are needed and come up with a specific plan of action. Create GMAP for every department with weekly reporting.

5. Implementation- Work with the board and management team to implement the new solutions. Help create new systems, procedures, and policies to make sure these solutions are carried out 10 out of 10 times.

6. Report- Review of everything that was done from start to finish. Problems, solutions, key people involved, expectations, and new systems, procedures & policies.

7. Follow Up- Follow up with organization at two different stages to check status. First follow up will be after 3 months of final report. We’ll make sure that you are getting the most out of the new solutions we’ve implemented, offer suggestions on best practices, and help you make any adjustments needed if there were any changes to your business that you did not anticipate. The second follow up will be after 6 months of final report. This should give enough time to allow the solutions to impact the business. We will also make sure that you have all the tools needed for your continued success.

The One Thing- We interview up to 30 employees of your company in all different positions, roles, and ranks to get every perspective in regards to the challenges the company has. During this interview process we ask “What is the one thing that is stopping this company from being a great company? A much larger, more successful, more profitable company?”. Not only does this help us find many different hidden challenges but it we tend to hear one or two things that come up often. When we hear one problem come up many times from many different employees in many different positions, we know that this problem has to be fixed immediately. Although we’re still in the Discovery Phase, we know that fixing this challenge will have one of the greatest impacts on the company.

Current/Max volumes- It’s important to understand what your max capacity is. You have to anticipate where a bottleneck would form if you were flooded with business. Everything has a max capacity but it’s important to have these balanced. For example you might have a very high production capacity and marketing budget which might motivate you to take in a ton of new orders but if your shipping capacity is lower than your production capacity then you are constrained by your lowest capacity. By anticipating this ahead of time you are avoiding customers having a bad experience.

Marketing Evaluation- When looking at marketing we want to make sure that each dollar is invested as opposed to spent. This means there has to be a return on investment for each dollar spent. Our analysis includes:

• Finding out which marketing campaigns are producing the highest results
• Make sure that all campaigns have a common message and theme.
• Have every campaign play off of each other to leverage the effect.
• Systemize campaigns so that there is no room for error.

Maintain consistency of the campaign. As long as each marketing vehicle is profitable then we must make sure that it is run all of the time, not just once in awhile.

Sales Team Evaluation- Your sales team is your biggest tool in creating revenue. We identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Each salesperson is evaluated on their individual performance and abilities. The sales process is also analyzed to make sure it is efficient and effective.

10 P’s- People, Place, Price, Product, Promotion, Packaging, Profit, Presentation, Policies & Procedures. We look at each as it’s own entity, listen to employee and customer reviews so we can find the current and potential challenges.

Cohesive Unit Evaluation- Every person, every department, every effort has to move as one cohesive unit. Often times we find companies that are going in all different directions and forward progress is being negated by another unit’s regression. Each unit of the 10 P’s is strategically structured to move as one cohesive unit for the same mission and vision of the company.

Customer’s experience- The customer’s experience is the ultimate gauge of the future success or failure of a company. You can do all the marketing in the world but if you don’t deliver a great product or service and create a great customer experience then it will be a matter of time before your business fails. Competition is so fierce now that excellence is the minimum requirement. Anything less is subpar and you will be replaced by the companies who understand that. This is where we look into customer reviews, your online reputation, understand your return policies, and customer service protocols. Amazon.com was built on their level of service.

Company Reputation- A good reputation is vital to building trust, trust is vital to generating sales, and sales are vital to the success of your company. We focus on your online reputation as well as the reputation you have in your industry. A good marketing and PR strategy can repair most bad reputations and strengthen good ones.

Incentives Alignment- Often times you see employee incentives structured to generate more sales and increase profits. At first this seems like the obvious solution but the problem is that people do things for their own self serving needs and this becomes the employee and not about the customer. When employees put their needs before the customers that they are supposed to be serving then this takes away from the customer experience. For example employees might be offered a bonus to push a certain line of products. These products might have higher profit margins built in but they might not be right for many customers. These incentives will motivate employees to push these products on to customers in which it wasn’t a right fit and “find a fit”. Many customers will walk away not happy because they didn’t get the product they would have loved and raved about. Although this is one small example, it showcases how incentive should be aligned with the customer’s experience. Your mission as a company should be to make every customer a raving fan. We will help you create incentives to make that happen as often as possible.

Employee profiles- During the interview process we will evaluate key employees or employees who have a key role in the company. Your people ARE your company so it’s important to have the very best people in the best position for them. Sometimes you have the right person in the wrong position and it makes them seem like the wrong person for the company. We will not only evaluate but discuss the personality types that work very well in those key positions. Each employee must fit into the company’s culture. It is important that everyone is the right fit for the company. They must have a personal mission equal to the company’s vision and mission. Even a superstar will not perform to their capability if they do not fit into your company’s culture.

Culture- In order for people to excel, they must be in an environment that makes them thrive. The culture shouldn’t be something that accidentally forms, to create optimal environments management has to predetermine what they’d like the culture to be and continue to work at creating that. A indicator of how well management is doing in this department is employee turnover. We look to see what the average length of time people are employed at the company. We also ask employees to give feedback so management can get an employees perspective on the company’s current work environment. We then help on creating a culture to make everyone happier and perform at a higher level.

Mission: t’s important for every employee to completely understand and can repeat at any time the company’s mission. This is why your company exists, company goals, purpose, and motivation for doing the work you’re doing. For many businesses, a mission statement is nothing more than something they put on brochures or their website which means they do not have a true mission. If you don’t have a motivation that’s bigger than making a profit, you will be making decisions to benefit the company and not the community you serve. This is short term thinking and will have long term consequences. If their is a real mission in place then each and every employee must adopt that same mission and make decisions based on that mission. This will make them become a cohesive unit and solve many other problems down the road.

Ideal Clients- Certain clients have a much larger impact on your bottom line than others. If you look at your numbers most likely you’ll find that 80 percent of the revenue comes from just 20 percent of your clients. We look to identify who these “Ideal Clients” are so that the marketing campaigns are directed to attracted these types of buyers. Imagine if all your customers were this big.

Time Management Evaluations- The simplest and fastest way to doing more production is just being more productive. This is where time management is vital. People that don’t have a money management system in place waste money, people who don’t have a time management system in place waste time. Each hour that an employee wastes over the course of a month or year is money spent on that employee for nothing. If you think about how much money your business could save over all the hours each employee wastes by working inefficiently and then you multiplied that by all your employees, it adds to a tremendous amount of money. On top of that, employee salaries are an investment not a cost which means that by paying this person one dollar for X amount of time to do this job, your company is generating 2X or 3X in revenue to facilitate the sale. This means that you’re not only losing all that time in wasted payroll for all your employees all those hours but you are also losing the potential revenue generated if they were productive in that time. That’s where we come in. We will look at a typical day for each team member and also understand what the top performers in each position are doing differently. We will help implement the most effective time management strategies so each member of the team is working very efficiently and producing much more.

Strategic Innovation- Knowing how important innovation is to the long term success of any business, this is where we look at the process your business has for innovation. How is it done? How often? Are there any policies, procedures, or protocols in place for innovation? What else can be innovated? (Business model, marketing, etc)

Stage of Life- There is a life cycle to everything, business included. We would like to know exactly what stage of life is the business in so we can anticipate the next set of problems. For example if your business is in the infancy stage then you know that cashflow is a big problem that you are currently facing. A big push in marketing and sales will get you out of this stage. As you gain more customers and revenue starts dramatically increasing, you will have other growing pains like the lack of systems in this case. Systems will help you be more productive so that you can handle the increase of business. Each stage of life will come with it’s own challenges and knowing what to expect ahead of time makes these transitions much easier. There is also a stage of life your industry, your market, a product, your CEO. We will help you put it all in perspective so that you are moving as efficiently as possible.

G 4- When people want to grow their business the first thing they focus on is getting more customers. If you can get more customers but can’t handle the business then what good is it? Still, can you deliver a great product to all these customers- flawlessly? If so, just have them come back for more and you’re on your way to start growing. Answering No to any of the G 4 questions will tell you what to focus on next. The G 4 is:

• Can you get the customers?
• Can you handle the business?
• Can you deliver a great product- flawlessly?
• Can you have them come back for more?

Strategy/Marketing/Sales Makeover- In order to maximize results, marketing, sales, and corporate strategy must be aligned. Marketing must create interest and deliver interested prospects to sales. Sales must then turn these prospects to customers. All these efforts must be done in a strategic fashion targeting the best possible buyers for your company and ideal clients which will have the largest impact on your business.