Road Tripping Using SGA

Road Tripping Using SGA

Have you taken a road trip lately? Having lived in San Diego, CA for a few years and suddenly embarking upon a move to TN, my wife and I decided to take a road trip up to Monterey. For those of you have never been, it’s just south of San Francisco, about 500 miles from San Diego. We thought, what a great way to end our experience on the golden coast! So where do you start your planning? The obvious answer is, “right from where you are.” Today it’s quite easy to plan a road trip, or not plan for that matter, and just jump in the car and go… head north, or whatever way is in the general direction of your destination. You plug in a location of your first day’s stop in your GPS app on your phone and go. Years ago, the journey required a bit more thought as you had to acquire the necessary paper maps or open Netscape on your computer and print the maps that cover the route of your journey. Anyway, going off route is not uncommon but finding your way back is always necessary to avoid getting completely lost.

Such is the route of your business. You start with an idea, a dream if you will, of where you’d like to see yourself in 1, 3 maybe 5 years doing what you know. Your trade, your skills ideal for that business are clear and well suited. So, with clear eyes and boundless ambition, you embark upon the journey… you’re a business owner! Depending upon where you are on that journey as you read this, you may have decided that you had not PLANNED for an issue with inventory shortages, or employee disfunction, how about accounting mishaps or less customers than you expected and maybe even… not making the amount of money you had expected. Now what? Quit? Bag it all and do something else? Absolutely NOT! You’re better than that!

The answer is in the road trip… start with where you are NOW. Thus, we’ve created the SGA… Strategic Growth Analytics application to obtain a baseline of where the business is today.

Whenever we are honored with a business owner sharing the vision of their journey, we logically start with where that business is TODAY. We work together to determine the reasonable steps to continue that journey by asking 3 important questions:

1. What was your vision when you first got started in your business?
2. What are your most critical challenges from achieving your business goals?
3. Where is the company today in terms of revenues, gross margin and net profit.

With a starting point, obstacles, and a destination clearly in front of us, we can review up to 32 important strategies in the 5 pillars of your business that have time-tested, mathematically certain changes that can occur in your business to incrementally change the outcome of a business owner’s effort. As with your road trip, road construction or an unexpected detour can change your plan. Do we change the destination? Of course not. The solution is based upon the basic principle that, “from small changes, great things can come to pass.” Using the depth of your working knowledge of your industry and your acute awareness of your business, we review how small incremental changes will impact your revenue growth AND the money you put in your pocket.

The 5 pillars of your business are quite simple to distinguish:

1. People
2. Product or Service
3. Operations
4. Sales
5. Money & Finance

Breaking them down into 32 different strategies, we can identify the value of making an improvement in process or operations and allow you to think differently about the solution.

Using the obstacles or challenges that you as a business owner are faced with on a day-to-day basis, the focus of your effort can become easily shifted to the “squeaky wheel”, so to speak. Most business owners find themselves trapped in time addressing each issue that occurs in their business to the point that the distraction takes them away from the central focus of their effort.  The SGA becomes your GPS for reaching your business destination.

It’s a good time to look at the issue and recognize how “fixing the wheel” rather than “greasing the wheel” will impact your company’s performance. For example, a 5% change in 5 areas of marketing will yield more than a 25% change overall (because of compounding), mathematically speaking.

Taking your business to a new level does not suggest that you must “reinvent the wheel.” You’ve honed your craft and you have been successful. An analytical review of what has made you successful to this point will invariably uncover areas that may result in a dynamic change in outcome. The questions asked for each strategy are designed for you to use your knowledge to make a practical calculation of improvement based on your years of experience. YOU get to craft the outcome given a proven formula for success.

The results can impact the outcome of your business, the amount of time you work in your business and ultimately the freedom you would have to achieve a new level all without having to spend thousands of dollars on reinvention. We all have heard that “working smarter, not harder” is an oversimplified means to an end. But is it? We believe that your work-life balance is critical to you. Stephen Covey once stated, “begin with the end in mind”. The SGA is our way of helping you achieve what you have envisioned for your business and ultimately your life.

Steve McCrillis

[email protected]