business development
How to Make Your Business Attractive to Buyers
Is your business attractive to buyers?
I’ve been involved in mergers and acquisitions for the past 25 years. I’m always asked how my clients and businesses decide who to buy. Why do they choose to buy certain businesses and pass on others? Sitting in a conference on Succession Planning for Private Businesses last week reminded me of my earliest exposure to mergers and acquisitions, including working with a larger business bought by Berkshire Hathaway back in the mid 80’s and then working in several different divisions within that business. I came away understanding a key component to acquisition success is buying companies with enduring competitive advantage in their markets. This hasn’t changed over the length of my career. I was also involved early in my career with several venture funded buyouts that did not work out for either the acquired and/or acquiring businesses. I wondered why it worked out well for some companies while other acquisitions ended in failure. What made some owners financially successful when they sold their businesses, and others not? Continue reading
What Today’s Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Washington
Can today’s entrepreneurs learn from George Washington?
The first lesson George Washington might teach us is that it’s better to dodge a bullet than take one. As a military leader President Washington had several horses shot out from under him in several different battles. He understood that you can’t make things happen from the back of the battlefield. Serving leaders are willing to lead from the front and are willing to do the things they ask others to do. He understood leaders must step up and take responsibility for their results. Entrepreneurs understand that if it’s going to be done right that sometimes means they must do it.
The second lesson to learn from Washington is that he had extensive formal training in the military. He had a formal military training in the British army. He learned the more traditional ways of battle from generations of great military leaders from England. George Washington didn’t let his advanced education and experience limit his ability to recreate the rules of war. He developed strategies that would allow him to use his fledging army to confound the world’s most powerful military. Entrepreneurs must know how to create their own opportunities in the markets they work in. Going straight at your opposition is most likely to end in a loss for your team. As you organization continues to evolve so should your go-to-market strategies. Be agile when you competitors are larger and dominate smaller markets to increase your profits.
The third lesson to learn from Washington is to know when to strategically retreat and regroup. George Washington understood you can’t win every battle. Use what you learned to step back and develop a different strategy. He was the master of using the environment to change the way we fought and won. He was willing to take risks and seize opportunities when others didn’t see them. He crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve to surprise and defeat his enemies. Successful entrepreneurs must know how to seize new markets when they appear. You must create as many opportunities as you find. Leaving old markets to enter new ones is critical to your organization’s success and growth.
The fourth lesson to learn from Washington is to know what you are good at. President Washington was a man who was very comfortable with who he was and what he wasn’t. He invested his lifetime knowing what he did best and then delegated to others around him to support his efforts. He spent significant time knowing what he needed to create success both here and overseas. He then found the most capable men and women to support his dreams. Purpose driven entrepreneurs know what they do best. They then find others with complementary skills to do the things they don’t do well.
The final lesson to learn from President George Washington was to know when to leave. Succession is a hot topic today for many business founders. Knowing when and how to bring in the right people is critical to a sustainable organization. If any President was ever given an opportunity to be made King, it was George Washington. He chose to leave office because he understood that our country, and ultimately, our form of government could not be built on the back on an individual, no matter who they might be. In a truly courageous act, he helped create a Constitution and a culture that would far exceed his life and impact. Many great entrepreneurs have failed to create the culture and structure to live beyond their vision of the business. Entrepreneurs must be willing to plan for the unplanned and develop an organization that transcends the individual founding team and develop succession plans for key people within the organization. Then even the best leaders must be willing to step down and create future leaders in the process.
Most of us are very familiar with the stories about Washington; the infamous cherry tree, the silver dollar across the Potomac, the winter in Valley Forge. Looking past the school stories you’ll find we have much more to learn from the Father of our country.
What Do Your Stakeholders Value?
For many us, the rate of change is incredible, both personally and for our organizations. How we deal with this change determines if our organization remains sustainable over both the short and longer term. So let’s review what your stakeholders want from organizations. By focusing on what they value I believe we are creating an organization that both meets and exceeds our customers’ expectations. In my experience with many leading nonprofits and healthcare organizations, the biggest success factor they all share is their focus on what their customers’ value. In a time with more limited budgets and more challenging economic times, we must focus on our market’s critical needs and not waste time on things that have minimum impact on our stakeholders.
What do your stakeholders value? For many organizations, they have a superficial understanding of the value they create for their customers. One of the first things I work on with clients and partners is to help them better understand what value they are creating for their key stakeholder groups. I believe that many organizations give this a quick look and choose not dig into how they customers’ worlds are changing and thus their expectations are changing. While working with a senior leadership team in a healthcare organization, we discussed what their clients expected from the doctor. We got many classic answers, such as good service, friendly people, and a good result from the procedure they were having done. On the surface, this was correct. But I then asked my doctors, “When was the last time they shopped for a better doctor?” There was an uncomfortable pause and a murmur among the physicians. What do I mean by a better doctor?
I then shared that for many older patients, the doctor was the person they trusted with their healthcare, literally trusted with their lives. However, for many caregivers, doctors were just another responsibility that they had to deal with in taking care of their aging parents. They had many different duties in their lives and in this case, they really didn’t understand or have the time to better understand what might be going on with their parents. I suggested that we try to uncover the wants of not only the primary patients, but also the wants and needs of their caregivers and even their primary physicians. The healthcare organization of the future would need to take these factors into account if they hoped to maintain their best clients for many years.
The big want we uncovered was that other key stakeholders need to be brought up to speed on what was going on with the patient. We had to serve our clients in a different way. We needed to provide support to our different stakeholders while still remaining focused on the patient. It was up to us to manage our stakeholders’ expectations at being better at managing their health over time. We needed to educate our patients to why they should choose us and why they should trust us with their health concerns. The education process was almost as valuable as the procedure itself, and for many caregivers, it was the primary reason they chose us to take care of their family’s health. Now, how did we support this need? First, we created fact sheets for each of the major procedures for the caregivers that would help them better understand what the patient would be going through with their procedures. We had to make it easy for them to access critical information both before and after the procedure. We had to make sure that our nurses were prepared to help patients during the procedures and move the right information to the referring doctors in an efficient manner. We also learned over time to share realistic expectations with all stakeholders from the start.
Now, why is this important to you and your organization? In a world where people have unlimited choices and unlimited information through the internet, we need to focus on what our clients are looking for. An Angie’s List for physicians is not as unlikely today as it might have been five years ago! In the past, changes may have taken a long time to happen. Today, everything has sped up and your stakeholders expect you to keep up with their changing priorities. If you don’t, there will be other organizations that do. If you hope to remain connected to your markets, you must learn how to better understand their expectations and then continue to help them meet their unmet needs if you want to have their continued support. Next week, we will share with you how to create better connection s with your stakeholders using the process we created to better understand what your customers’ expectations are and how to exceed them .
The Two Choices We Face
Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation.
And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice.
To do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all.
Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?
Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this worthiest of undertakings.
Results are the best measurement of human progress. Not conversation. Not explanation. Not justification. Results! And if our results are less than our potential suggests that they should be, then we must strive to become more today than we were the day before. The greatest rewards are always reserved for those who bring great value to themselves and the world around them as a result of who and what they have become.
To Your Success,
Jim Rohn
How to Take Your Leadership to the Next Level
Last week we posted the first half of the article by Brian Tracy on Leading and Motivating. Here’s the conclusion.
The third quality is courage. It is the chief distinguishing characteristic of the true leader. It is almost always visible in the leader’s words and actions. It is absolutely indispensable to success, happiness and the ability to motivate other people to be the best they can be.
In a way, it is easy to develop a big vision for yourself and for the person you want to be. It is easy to commit yourself to living with complete integrity. But it requires incredible courage to follow through on your vision and on your commitments. You see, as soon as you set a high goal or standard for yourself, you will run into all kinds of difficulties and setbacks. You will be surrounded by temptations to compromise your values and your vision. You will feel an almost irresistible urge to “get along by going along.” Your desire to earn the respect and cooperation of others can easily lead to the abandonment of your principles, and here is where courage comes in.
The fourth quality of motivational leadership is realism. Realism is a form of intellectual honesty. The realist insists upon seeing the world as it really is, not as he wishes it were. This objectivity, this refusal to engage in self-delusion, is a mark of the true leader.
Those who exhibit the quality of realism do not trust to luck, hope for miracles, pray for exceptions to basic business principles, expect rewards without working or hope that problems will go away by themselves. These all are examples of self-delusion, of living in a fantasyland.
The motivational leader insists on seeing things exactly as they are and encourages others to look at life the same way. As a motivational leader, you get the facts, whatever they are. You deal with people honestly and tell them exactly what you perceive to be the truth. This doesn’t mean that you will always be right, but you will always be expressing the truth in the best way you know how.
The fifth quality of motivational leadership is responsibility. This is perhaps the hardest of all to develop. The acceptance of responsibility means that, as Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.”
The game of life is very competitive. Sometimes, great success and great failure are separated by a very small distance. In watching the play-offs in basketball, baseball and football, we see that the winner can be decided by a single point, and that single point can rest on a single action, or inaction, on the part of a single team member at a critical part of the game.
Life is very much like competitive sports. Very small things that you do, or don’t do, can either give you the edge that leads to victory or take away your edge at the critical moment. This principle is especially true with regard to accepting responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens to you.
You become a motivational leader by motivating yourself. And you motivate yourself by striving toward excellence, by committing yourself to becoming everything you are capable of becoming. You motivate yourself by throwing your whole heart into doing your job in an excellent fashion. You motivate yourself and others by continually looking for ways to help others to improve their lives and achieve their goals. You become a motivational leader by becoming the kind of person others want to get behind and support in every way.
Your main job is to take complete control of your personal evolution and become a leader in every area of your life. You could ask for nothing more, and you should settle for nothing less.
About the Author
Brian Tracy is a legendary in the fields of management, leadership, and sales. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written over 40 books, including his just-released book “The Power of Charm.” Special offer: To receive your free copy of “Crunch Time!, just visit www.briantracy.com and click on the Crunch Time! icon. He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.
The Time to Act
Engaging in genuine discipline requires that you develop the ability to take action. You don’t need to be hasty if it isn’t required, but you don’t want to lose much time either. Here’s the time to act: when the idea is hot and the emotion is strong.
Let’s say you would like to build your library. If that is a strong desire for you, what you’ve got to do is get the first book. Then get the second book. Take action as soon as possible, before the feeling passes and before the idea dims. If you don’t,
here’s what happens -
- YOU FALL PREY TO THE LAW OF DIMINISHING INTENT -
We intend to take action when the idea strikes us. We intend to do something when the emotion is high. But if we don’t translate that intention into action fairly soon, the urgency starts to diminish. A month from now the passion is cold. A year from now it can’t be found.
So take action. Set up a discipline when the emotions are high and the idea is strong, clear, and powerful. If somebody talks about good health and you’re motivated by it, you need to get a book on nutrition. Get the book before the idea passes, before the emotion gets cold. Begin the process. Fall on the floor and do some push-ups. You’ve got to take action; otherwise the wisdom is wasted. The emotion soon passes unless you apply it to a disciplined activity. Discipline enables you to capture the emotion and the wisdom and translate them into action. The key is to increase your motivation by quickly setting up the disciplines. By doing so, you’ve started a whole new life process.
Here is the greatest value of discipline: self-worth, also known as self-esteem. Many people who are teaching self-esteem these days don’t connect it to discipline. But once we sense the least lack of discipline within ourselves, it starts to erode our psyche. One of the greatest temptations is to just ease up a little bit. Instead of doing your best, you allow yourself to do just a little less than
your best. Sure enough, you’ve started in the slightest way to decrease your sense of self-worth.
There is a problem with even a little bit of neglect. Neglect starts as an infection. If you don’t take care of it, it becomes a disease. And one neglect leads to another. Worst of all, when neglect starts, it diminishes our self-worth.
Once this has happened, how can you regain your self-respect? All you have to do is act now! Start with the smallest discipline that corresponds to your own philosophy. Make the commitment: “I will discipline myself to achieve my goals so that in the years ahead I can celebrate my successes.”
To Your Success,
Jim Rohn
To read previous articles, quotes, and Q and A from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine Archives, or to get a complete listing of Jim Rohn’s books, audios, videos and seminar schedule, or to place an order; please go to: http://www.jimrohn.com or call 800-929-0434 M-F 8:00-5:30 CST.
Five Tips For Creating Successful Habits
Fully 95% of everything you accomplish, or fail to accomplish, will be determined by your habits, either good or bad. Successful people have good habits that guide and direct them to ever greater success. Unsuccessful people have bad habits that trip them up throughout their lives.
Here are five things that you can do immediately to begin developing the kind of habits that lead onward and upward to a wonderful life:
First, imagine that you have a magic wand. You can wave this magic wand and create your future anyway you like. Project forward 3-5 years and imagine that your future was perfect in every way. What would it look like?
One of the fastest ways to pull yourself out of your current situation is to imagine an exciting future. This visualization or picture of
something that you can be, do or have will often stimulate you into new behaviors.
Second, set clear, written, measurable goals to achieve that ideal future vision. Take out a piece of paper and write down exactly what you
want. Set a deadline, make a plan to accomplish it and work on that plan every single day.
Third, identify the most important new habit or behavior that you could practice that would help you to achieve your goal. Perhaps it is
the habit of getting up and getting going early. Perhaps it is the habit of setting priorities and working on high-value tasks. Perhaps it is the habit of being more patient and listening to people more carefully. Whatever it is, begin to practice that habit every single day.
Fourth, tell other people that you have decided to develop this particular habit. Encourage them to remind you when you slip from time to time. Knowing that other people are watching you is a powerful stimulus to personal change.
Fifth, give yourself a reward each time you practice the habit that helps you to attain the goal that moves you closer to your ideal future vision. When you make a giant step forward, give yourself a giant reward. We are all motivated by incentives, and the incentive system that we set up for ourselves can be the most powerful force for transforming the way we think, feel and act.
About the author
Brian Tracy is a legendary in the fields of management, leadership, and sales. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 28 books, including his just-released book “The Psychology of Selling.” Special offer: To receive your free copy of “Crunch Time!, just visit www.briantracy.com and click on the Crunch Time! icon. He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.
Become a Global Networker
Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, and the richest person in the world by several billion dollars, is convinced that the huge access to information will trickle down to the consumer. In another two years, he predicts, most decisions such as hiring a part-time worker for your home, buying a consumer product, choosing a lawyer – will be made on a much more informed basis because of electronic communication.
It changes the nature of competition, because in a networked world, we can ignore geographic limits to our shopping. People, information and services are merging together, all in the name of time-based competitive advantage.
Here is a check-off list of important considerations. How many on the list are part of your daily life?
· E-Mail is now the most popular method of communication next to the telephone in the industrialized nations. And, you can now transmit your e-mail by voice mail. It is possible and reasonable to expect that you can answer 30 e-mail messages in one hour, or one every two minutes. This is equivalent to answering personal correspondence at the rate of 30 letters per hour, without a secretary.
· If you communicate long distance, nationally or globally by phone – through the use of Internet phone or software – you can talk indefinitely without long distance phone charges over the Internet. By paying only the monthly, on-line service charge, you can reduce your long distance phone bills immeasurably by communicating verbally, computer to computer, with individuals having compatible software.
· Since it will be desirable to be multi-national in your business and personal relationships, by installing foreign language software you’ll be able to have all of your word processing appear on the screen in two languages.
Select at least one new language you feel will be desirable to learn during the next few years and install the software for that language. By having your correspondence appear in both your native language and one new language, both in text and audio, it is a great way to learn.
· As you look toward the future, be prepared to have at least one of the following: An ISDN phone line for your modem. A cable service for your modem. Or a satellite dish for your modem. Cable and satellite modem services will be mandatory as requirements for speed and quality of downloading large quantities of information and graphics increase.
· Ensure that your computer is upgraded for real-time audio, MP3, and video streaming, so you’ll be able to receive information from the Internet in real time. Consider investing in video conferencing equipment that allows you to hold live video conferences at multiple locations nationally and internationally, with multiple clients. Although video conferencing will not replace live seminars and meetings, it will reduce the costs and greatly increase the number of clients that can be served at the same time, in the knowledge century.
Action Idea: Pick at least two friends or business associates living in other countries, or in other parts of this country, that you will e-mail at least once every two weeks.
Denis Waitley has studied, counseled and trained leaders in virtually every field including Apollo astronauts, Olympic gold medalists, Super Bowl champions, returning POW’s, heads of state and Fortune 500 top executives.
Denis is recognized as a world class speaker and author and has traveled the globe sharing success ideas and strategies to thousands of companies the past 25 years. To book Dr. Waitley to speak for your company or to be part of your upcoming Regional or National Convention send an email to speaker@deniswaitley.com or call 877-929-0439 and ask for Hilary.
Gaining Visibility
Have you noticed that some workers receive more promotions and greater pay than do their colleagues? This, despite the fact that they are apparently not even as competent. This doesn’t seem fair. Why should some people get ahead when others who seem to be working far harder, and even longer hours, get passed over for promotion and the additional rewards that go with it?
The fact is that to be a great success, it is important not only to be good at what you do, but also to be perceived as being good at what you do. Human beings are creatures of perception. It is not what they see but what they think they see that determines how they think and act. If one person is perceived as being more promotable, then it is very likely that he/she will get additional responsibilities and more money, even though there are others that can do a better job, if given the chance.
Fortunately, there are several things that one can do to increase visibility and accelerate the speed at which they move ahead in their career.
Develop Competence. Determine what parts of your job are most important to your boss and to your company, and then make the decision to become very good in those areas. You must be perceived as being very competent at what you do. That perception alone will bring you to the attention of more people faster than you can imagine. The perception of excellent performance will open up opportunities for greater responsibilities, higher pay and better positions. Becoming good at what you do should be the foundation of your strategy for gaining higher visibility and rapid advancement in your career.
Pay Attention to Your Overall Image. How you appear to others makes a real difference.
A recent survey of personnel executives found that the decision to hire or not to hire is made in the first 30 seconds. There are many elements of your life over which you have no control. But your external dress and appearance are totally a matter of personal preference. Through their choice of clothes, their grooming and their overall appearance, individuals deliberately make a statement about the kind of people they are. The way you look on the outside is a representation of the way you see yourself on the inside. It’s a good idea to dress the way the senior people in your company dress. Dress for the position two jobs above your own.
Join Professional Associations. Research professional associations connected with your business or field. Begin by attending meetings as a guest to carefully assess whether or not a professional association can be of value to you. Determine if the members are the kind of people you would like to know and are well established in their careers. Then, if you have decided that becoming known to the key people in this association can advance your career, take out a membership and get involved. Pick a key committee and volunteer for service. Find out which committee seems to be the most active and the most influential in that organization, and then step up to the plate. Volunteer your time, expertise and energy, and get busy. Attend every meeting. Take careful notes. Ask for assignments, and complete them on time and in an excellent fashion. This gives you an opportunity to perform for other key people in your profession in a non-threatening environment. You give them a chance to see what you can do and what kind of a person you are. You expand your range of valuable contacts in one of the most effective ways possible. The people you get to know on these committees can eventually be extremely helpful to you in your work and in your career.
Join A Well-Known Charitable Organization. Become active by donating your services to its annual fund-raising programs. You may not be wealthy now, but you do have time, and your willingness to give of yourself will soon be noticed by people who are higher up. Many men and women with limited contacts and limited resources have risen to positions of great prominence as the result of getting to know the key community leaders who participate in charitable organizations and professional associations.
Be Able To Set Priorities. Learn how to separate the relevant from the irrelevant when facing the many tasks of the day. Managers place very high value on a person who can set priorities and move quickly to get the job finished. Dependability in job completion is one of the most valued traits in the American work force. When your employer can hand you a job and then walk away and never worry about it again, you have moved yourself onto the fast track and your subsequent promotion and pay are virtually guaranteed.
Upgrade Your Work-Related Skills. Continually look for ways to keep your skills current and make sure that your superiors know about it. Look for additional courses you can take to improve at your job, and discuss them with your boss. Ask him or her to pay for the courses, but make it clear that you’re going to take them anyway. Also, ask your boss for book and audio program recommendations. Then follow up by reading and listening to them and asking for further recommendations. Bosses are very impressed with people who are constantly striving to learn more in order to increase their value to their companies.
Develop a Positive Mental Attitude. People like to be around people they like and tend to promote them. A consistent, persistent attitude of cheerfulness and optimism is quickly noticed by everybody. When you make an effort to cultivate an attitude of friendliness toward people, they, in turn, will go to extraordinary efforts to open doors for you.
In the final analysis, taking the time to become an excellent human being will do more to raise your visibility and improve your chances for promotion than will any other single thing that you can do. And you can do it if you really want to.
About the author
Brian Tracy is a legendary in the fields of management, leadership, and sales. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 28 books, including his just-released book “The Psychology of Selling.” Special offer: To receive your free copy of “Crunch Time!, just visit www.briantracy.com and click on the Crunch Time! icon. He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.
How to Take Smart Risks
One of the best of all exercises, in every situation involving uncertainty, is to assess and evaluate the worst possible outcome. Ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong in this situation?”
Remember Murphy’s Law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” There are several secondary laws to Murphy’s Law, such as “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time” and “Of all the things that can go wrong, the most expensive thing will go wrong at the worst possible time.”
Another sub law is “Everything takes longer than your best calculation.” In advising businesspeople, I suggest that they take their very best estimate of break-even for any business venture and then triple it to arrive at a more realistic number. Whenever businesspeople follow this advice, they are amazed to find that, in spite of their best initial calculations, it indeed takes about three times longer than they thought it would to start making money.
Once you have identified the worst possible things that could go wrong, make a list of everything that you could do to offset these negative factors. Engage in what is called “crisis anticipation.” Look down the road, into the future, and imagine every possible crisis that could arise as the result of changing external circumstances.
One of the very best ways to develop your ability to take intelligent risks is to consciously and deliberately do the things you fear, one step at a time. You don’t have to leap out of an airplane without a parachute. That is not risk taking. That is simply being foolish. What you do have to do is to resist your natural tendency to slip into a comfort zone of complacency and low performance.
Many of our fears of taking risks turn out to be unfounded. They have no basis in reality. When you test them, you find that they don’t even exist. A very good way to overcome the fear of risk taking is to set clear, written, measurable goals for yourself, and then to review those goals regularly.
When you have clear goals and plans, and you continually work on them and evaluate your progress each day, you will see what you’re doing right and how you could improve your performance. You’ll feel more competent and capable and better about yourself. You’ll become more thoughtful and reflective and willing to take on even greater challenges. You’ll feel like the “master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” And your fears of taking risks will become smaller and smaller.
You learn how to take intelligent risks without fear by taking intelligent risks, and then by analyzing what happened. When you have clearly identified the risk involved, you can plan and prepare to maximize your opportunities while minimizing those risks. The more positive you feel about yourself, the more effective you will be in everything you undertake. Your ability to confidently take calculated risks in the direction of your goals will ultimately lead you toward success.
About the author:
Brian Tracy is a legendary in the fields of management, leadership, and sales. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 28 books, including his just-released books “Create Your Own Future” and “Goals!” He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.