Avoid losing millions in revenue and profit

leaky bucket - funny.pngFrom Howard Shore’s new book Your Business is a Leaky Bucket, there are many ways that businesses lose revenue and profit such as the following:

  1. Mediocre hiring practices:
    • Hiring and Keeping B and C players in critical positions
    • Leaving critical positions vacant
    • Lacking a standard interview process
    • Excessive turnover/Regrettable turnover
  2. Lack of alignment
  3. Chasing revenue anywhere and everywhere
    • Lack of targeted, differentiating strategy
    • No or ineffective Sales playbook and process
    • Inability to say “No” to the wrong customers/deals
    • Lack of financial transparency
If you want to grow, you need cash.  Plugging leaks is a simple way to find cash within the organization avoiding the need to borrow and/or give away ownership.
The three ways to avoid these three critical leaks (among many more) in your business is the following:
  1. Create a system to find and evaluate all the leaks. I recommend the CFO be in charge of this effort and part of his/her job description. You can start with the aforementioned list. Your P&L and B/S are also excellent places to look for leaks.
  2. Institute an action plan to plug the leaks you find.  President/COO is the best likely candidate to lead this process.  Every leak should have an owner that comes up with a plan and date for completion.
  3. Create a weekly meeting to hold everyone accountable and offer assistance to anyone who needs it.  I recommend that the CFO run this meeting. Spend time celebrating progress but spend most of the time completing the action plan on time.  This is a team effort with everyone pitching in when others ask for help.
Once you knock out all of these leaks, “rinse and repeat”.  If you are growing and moving forward, you will always have leaks.  It is part of the process.
Bill
Certified Scaling Up Coach
Scaling Up Workshop II

One Day ScalingUp Workshop – 4/12/17 – Special offer for Massachusetts companies*

The world-renowned Scaling Up Business Growth Workshop empowers you to accelerate profitable growth using a time-tested and results-driven methodology. Through this exclusive learning experience, Gazelles Coaches has empowered more than 40,000 executives and their leadership teams with proven tools and strategies to scale up smarter.

Register here.

* Receive 50% of the fees for this workshop paid for by the state of MA.  Click here to see if you qualify.

“Like many good coaches, Bill knows that buy-in, follow through and confidence are enhanced when ideas and priorities are generated from within the organization. Bill will motivate and guide you to do the work and make progress producing alignment and results” – Global Educators Office of the President

Bill (bill@catalsytgrowthadvisors.com; http://www.catalystgrowthadvisors.com)

Be Exceptional!

Published by Bill Flynn

Gazelles Member Advisor and early stage startup specialist with a proven track record with 16 Boston-based startups (9 to date with 5 successful outcomes, advisor to 7 others); SMB to Fortune 500 companies. 20+ years of Senior Sales, Marketing and GM experience in industries including mobile advertising, security, digital advertising, e-commerce and IT. Core Competencies: Player/Coach, Metrics-driven, Execution-based philosophy, Life-long learner

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d