Planning Procedures for Building Effective Management Systems: Phase IIWritten by Chris Anderson
You have permission to publish this article free of charge, as long as resource box is included with article. If you do run my article, a courtesy reply to sean@bizmanualz.com would be greatly appreciated. This article is 548 words long including resource box. Thanks for your interest.Part One of Series: Discovery Next Week: Development Have you ever had opportunity to watch construction of a large building? The daily progress from foundation to top floor is truly amazing, and if you’re like me, you wonder “how does it all happen?” The answer: it takes a lot of planning. The Planning Phase A complex construction job clearly requires planning in excruciating detail to orchestrate materials and manpower. Inadequate planning can result in waste, delays and a shoddy end-product. Building an effective management system is equally dependent on executing a strong planning phase. This article is second of five that describe how to build such a system in your organization. Writing Procedures The planning stage is arguably most important step in any large-scale project. If you fail to plan properly, everything else will likely follow this failure. Just as a construction contractor wouldn’t dare start ordering materials or pounding nails without a plan, your firm must avoid moving too quickly into actual development phase of writing procedures that are basis of an effective management system. Business Assessment Using construction analogy, first step is typically a survey of parcel of land on which to construct your building. You’ll examine such conditions as utilities, roads, property grade and soil. In a management system development project, we call this step a GAP Analysis, because it articulates what “gap” between current reality in your organization and your stated objectives. Recall that objectives and measurable effectiveness criteria were established in Phase I – Discovery.
| | Attract Investors and Key EmployeesWritten by Bob Decker
How to Attract Investors and Key Employees: YOU MUST PACKAGE YOUR COMPANY! You have come a long way on your path to realizing your business goals and dreams. You had a great idea for a product or service. You recognized a need in marketplace and moved into position to fill it. You have taken first steps toward building your company infrastructure. The first few years in business have provided modest growth and you are now in a position to pursue further growth and expansion of your business. In most cases this means you will need to pursue investors to finance expansion. In support of investor and exit strategies, you may also be anticipating hiring key employees in near future. Before you try to do either of these things it is important to understand aspects of your company “packaging” that may hurt your chances to attract an investor or that talented candidate for Vice President. In order to attract quality investors, your company must look professional. Investors and key employees evaluate many of same things about your business before they commit to investing in it. They want to see following: A company with a sustainable competitive advantage An experienced management team Defensible intellectual property, products, services, or technology A solid business model with tangible revenues Demonstrated leadership in high growth markets Whether your company scores high in any or all of these areas doesn’t really matter if you do not present yourself in a way that shows your strengths and communicates clearly to your evaluators. Your story must be clearly articulated in your business plan, in your public presentations, on your Web site, in your sales collateral, and across your entire organization if you even hope to attract interest in your business and stand out from your competitors. WHY INVESTORS AND KEY EMPLOYEES MAY BE PASSING YOU OVER Without a business plan you have no chance to attract a serious investor. You may be able to get Aunt Mary or Brother-in-Law Fred to give you a few dollars just because you smile at them and tell them that you’re brilliant, but real investors know that, unless you are serious enough about your business to plan it out, you probably are not a good risk for them. Your business plan is first thing they see and know about your company. It represents your company to them. Young and growing companies often try to meet with potential investors and employees and “wing” a business plan. Competition for investment dollars and key employees is fierce, and companies with updated, crisp, and well written business plans move to top of list for what they need most: money and talent. Angel and venture firms have trash cans full of poorly written, outdated, and badly packaged business plans. By contrast, if you impress investors with your plan, they will initiate further discussions and your chance to win financial support from them increases. What Investors Look For The following is a high level look at what investors want to see before they risk their money on a potential opportunity: A crisp and concise business plan A reasonable revenue rate and exit strategy A go-to-market and sales execution strategy Pipeline methodology with forecast and sales metrics Prospect qualification measurements, identified sales territories, and sales plans that are directly aligned to company revenue objectives A solid management team, including an effective sales organization, mapped to routes to market CASE STUDY: PLAID SOFTWARE AND CONSULTING COMPANYPlaid Software and Consulting was in business for over five years. Plaid had sustainable revenues and was looking to attract quality investors and key employees to position company for a potential merger or IPO. Unfortunately investors and key employees were not breaking down doors to work with Plaid. The biggest reason that Plaid was consistently overlooked was that Plaid had look and feel of a small, unpolished organization. The company’s Web site, collateral, and messaging was immature and ineffective. Investors and key employees saw glaring problem areas owners needed to fix in order to make company “investment worthy”. These problem areas were: The company lacked a viable business plan. The sales and marketing components of business were ineffective. Plaid represented to investors that it had a huge pipeline, yet company lacked deal qualification metrics and a validated pipeline, and had no formal forecasting tools. Plaid did not have a go-to-market strategy, mapped to an overall business plan. Plaid had no direct sales force and its inside sales resources were ineffective because they were not managed by metrics and were not paid to succeed. The company didn’t have a channel strategy. Plaid’s Web site was unattractive, hard to use, and not informative. The company’s sales collateral was badly written and was focused on features rather than on benefits to customer. Plaid’s marketing message was not developed and was inconsistent across messaging sources. Before a worthy investor or key employee would commit to Plaid Software and Consulting, company needed to bring in outside advisors to “fix” these mission critical elements.
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