Just because you are in business and you want to make, say, a million dollars, we have to ask ourselves why we are doing the things that we do. I'm here to ask you whether you can actually improve your business and whether you are on the right path. In this article, we will feature our conversation with a very special guest. She is Anne Graham from legendaryvalue.com. They are all about helping small businesses, entrepreneurs, and even medium to large scale businesses, to improve what they do through leveraging what they already have, and thriving using the tools that they've got available. I'm very excited to have this talk with her. So, have a look at our conversation and learn with us.
David: Welcome Anne.
Anne: Thank you very much David. It's a pleasure.
David: Same here. Now I noticed you've got a lot to offer in terms of small business development and entrepreneurial business development as well. Can you firstly explain how you got into this business and why you started?
Anne: Absolutely, I'm delighted to do so. I actually started my career quite a long time ago with two big Fortune 500 companies. What was interesting for me there was that it didn't really matter how hard or how long I worked, I was still one very small cog in a very big wheel. It was at that point that I decided that I would much prefer to work in smaller companies where you can actually get things done, with my eventual goal of being out on my own as an entrepreneur. So I spent the ten years after I left the fortune 500 really doing a lot of business turnaround for small and midsize businesses. Those are the businesses that have gotten themselves into trouble primarily because they weren't looking after their customers, they were not watching their cashflow, and they were hurting. I figured out quite a number of things along the way, not because I'm brilliant but because I banged my head against the wall for several enough times that things finally made sense. If you ever see a photo of me, you'll see a big flat spot on my forehead from all those days. I went there on my own, in the year 2000, and I have been working with small and medium sized companies ever since, basically helping them implement a lot of tools to help them get the most out of their businesses. All of us go into business because of something we absolutely love to do, and most of us end up getting trapped behind a desk or in really boring meetings, doing email all day, doing spreadsheets all day, and we kind of lose track of what it was that made business a lot of fun. So I always say that I would love to put some playback in your day. Well, we put some buck in your bottomline, and that's what really drives me David.
David: Well, that is a great goal, because if you can help others, then eventually you will be helping yourself. What goes around, usually comes around, doesn't it?
Anne: Absolutely.
David: Now, before we get further into this, I noticed on your website that you've got some great giveaway products. Can you tell us about those?
Anne: Sure, you bet. I'm a big fan of giving away something of value. I love to help people learn, I love to help people improve their businesses. So what you'll find when you go to my website, legendaryvalue.com, are some free assessments. You're going to find some free papers, some downloadable reports. We will talk about the reports in particular, in just a little while, because I think there's a great wakeup call for many small businesses. So you'll get some assessments, some freebies, and downloads. There is a lot of good information there for you.
David: Well, that's fantastic. Now, if I'm in small business and I think I'm doing okay, but I know there's room for improvement. Do you have some tips that could help us along the way? Something like step by step methods?
Anne: Absolutely. I'll give you five quick steps that you can do. I'm also going to let you know that I have a book coming out in the next week. It is called Profit In Plain Sight. It'll actually walk you through, in detail, each of the five steps that I'm going to share with you right now. I've also put together a little quick video for your visitors if they send an email to wealthy @ legendaryvalue.com. It's a free video, it'll just take them through anything, in case they're in their cars today and they can't quite take note of everything that we're talking about that might be useful to them.
So if you look at the five key steps in profit in plain sight, the first one is really Locking In On Customer Loyalty. Now, whether or not you're in a situation wherein you're expecting a big order from a customer and they go to the competition... I think we've all been in that situation before, haven't we?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: And you wonder what happened... why did they go to the competition? You did a great proposal, you had a great product, you thought you were making progress, and you thought the deal was yours. There are some basic steps that you can do to lock down how loyal a customer really is to you and whether or not they're likely to go to your competition, especially for small businesses. One order can really make or break it. So it's very important that you get a very clear sense of that. So step one is getting a clear sense of customer loyalty and using some proven tools. We'll share the video in getting the sense of how we do that.
Second piece of the puzzle is Managing Your Topline Growth, your revenue. Now, I'm going to challenge your readers with the idea that almost all of us, at one time or another, have fallen through what I call the revenue trap. And that is, we focus on the revenue to the exclusion of whether or not we make any money. I'm sure some of your readers are shaking their heads right now, sort of saying, "Yes, I've got customers that I've lost money on." Well I don't know about them, but in business school, I have also taught that the customer writes the check, not the other way around. So getting stuck in the revenue trap means that your topline looks really good. You're growing your business this way, you've sold a lot of products, and you've got nothing to show for it. There's a very simple way of plugging all those profit leaks and it comes into a very simple concept, where you basically figure out who your most profitable customers are, and you make sure you keep them. You figure out who your marginally profitable customers are, the ones who are kind of so-so, and there are some great little strategies you can use to either improve their profitability or help them do more profitable business with you. The third one is what I call the vampire customers. Those are the ones you know are costing you money and you've got to plug those leaks. Now probably some of your readers or probably even you as well, David, you're shaking your head and saying, "Oh, sounds like accounting, profit per customer. We don't calculate profit per customer, I don't know how to figure that out." That's why a lot of people stay stuck in the revenue trap. So let me give you a simple little example of how we do that. David, you've got customers, yes?
David: Yes.
Anne: Okay. How many of them pay you on time? And does that impact their profitability to you, if you're financing them?
David: Oh, absolutely.
Anne: And you know exactly who they are, don't you? You don't need any fancy accountants to know who pays you on time and who doesn't. Have you got customers who are really high hassle, high maintenance, versus the ones who are just a pleasure to do business with?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: For every company, there's about half a dozen different factors like that. Those that you can just eyeball and say, "These are the ones that are in pretty good shape, these are the ones that have few issues, and these are the ones that are costing us a bundle."
David: So, what's the next step?
Anne: Well, I gave you the first two steps. The first one is to really lock in to your customer loyalty through very simple conversation techniques. Number two was about topline growth. You have to make sure that you're going after topline growth, but you can't do it at the expense of profitability.
Now, let me give you a third way. It sort of blends the topline revenues as well as the bottomline profit. Simply, Look For One Percent Everywhere In Your Business. Now, in the video, I'm actually going to show on a white board a little calculation that you do to figure out what an impact of one percent in terms of either increased revenue or decreased costs means to your business. But I'll give your readers the ballpark figures for most businesses. By simply shifting by one percent more revenue or one percent less cost, it's going to make a difference on the bottomline, somewhere between 15 and 50 percent.
David: No way.
Anne: Absolutely. Find one percent everywhere in your company and it will transform your business.
David: So let's keep going Anne. What's next?
Anne: Number four. Are you ready for another big tip?
David: Yes, go ahead.
Anne: So here's idea number four: Differentiating From The Competition. It is difficult for most of us. These days, we all tend to look a little bit the same, and when our customers see us looking the same, they grind us on price. We lose our one percent advantage, right? Because we start discounting more and discounting less. I have a little free tip for you. If you're used to doing a ten percent discount, do a nine percent discount. There's one percent for you right there. Let me get back to you on differentiating from the competition. David, do you love travelling by airline these days?
David: I can't say it's my favorite hobby, but...
Anne: Not your favorite hobby, but when you think about it, the plane usually takes off from the right airport, it usually lands, and it usually lands in the right spot. So there's no quality issue is there? They're doing what they promised you they would do by taking you in a different spot. So why do we all hate airline travels so much, when they're technically providing us the product and service that we bought from them? It's the experience, isn't it?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: The last one is Innovation And Creativity. They are almost in everyone's to-do list. I've yet to meet a person, entrepreneur, big business owner, small business owner, and midsize business owner who actually has a plan to do it. Is innovation a big thing for you folks down in Australia?
David: Oh absolutely. You've got to keep moving, otherwise you'll become stagnant.
Anne: Right. But guess what? Not all of us have the next iPhone S, right? Usually innovation is associated with R and D, research and development, associated with big budgets, and associated with a huge risk of failure. And guess what that approached innovation is, what actually drives invention? You remember the segway? We all know the story of the segway, that wonderful little machine that will change the future of the world, that really cool invention. And now they're just little two wheels for those things that run around in the airports now and then. They never did take over the world.
David: No, not quite.
Anne: The difference between innovation, which actually solves all your problems, and invention, which is just very cool stuff that no one wants to buy.
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: The last chapter that I have in the book, and the last piece that I'll share in the video, that I'll put together for you folks, is a little bit about very simple ways of innovating. And it's not unlike the story that I just gave you about the hotel that I stayed at. Oftentimes, the innovations that we can do don't have anything to do with business or our product. It's often simply the way we make our customers feel. That little extra catch, that little extra mile, something that costs us almost nothing but solves the problems for them.
David: Right, absolutely. Well, it looks like we may have to continue this conversation at a later time Anne, but before that, if you can tell us how to get in contact with you and get a copy of your book...
Anne: The book, Profit In Plain Sight, will be released in six weeks time and it will be on Amazon, available broadly around the world. If you want to get started a little bit easily and a little more quickly, all you have to do is send me a quick email to wealthy@legendaryvalue.com, and what I'll do is I'll just send you back three little videos, about 15 minutes long. It's going to take you through those five areas that we talked about. We're going to have a few little quick solutions for you and it's going to point you in the direction of the book when it comes off the presses and is available to you. You're very welcome to start this whole process at no charge whatsoever, so, invest your time watching this video. And if you feel like you want to step up a little bit more, the book will be available to you. There are links throughout the book and more free training videos, and there's also something that I call Profit U, Profit University, and it gives you the full real deal in terms of the agenda you need to follow every week on how to make it happen.
David: Thank you so much Anne, I really appreciate your joining us today.
David: Welcome Anne.
Anne: Thank you very much David. It's a pleasure.
David: Same here. Now I noticed you've got a lot to offer in terms of small business development and entrepreneurial business development as well. Can you firstly explain how you got into this business and why you started?
Anne: Absolutely, I'm delighted to do so. I actually started my career quite a long time ago with two big Fortune 500 companies. What was interesting for me there was that it didn't really matter how hard or how long I worked, I was still one very small cog in a very big wheel. It was at that point that I decided that I would much prefer to work in smaller companies where you can actually get things done, with my eventual goal of being out on my own as an entrepreneur. So I spent the ten years after I left the fortune 500 really doing a lot of business turnaround for small and midsize businesses. Those are the businesses that have gotten themselves into trouble primarily because they weren't looking after their customers, they were not watching their cashflow, and they were hurting. I figured out quite a number of things along the way, not because I'm brilliant but because I banged my head against the wall for several enough times that things finally made sense. If you ever see a photo of me, you'll see a big flat spot on my forehead from all those days. I went there on my own, in the year 2000, and I have been working with small and medium sized companies ever since, basically helping them implement a lot of tools to help them get the most out of their businesses. All of us go into business because of something we absolutely love to do, and most of us end up getting trapped behind a desk or in really boring meetings, doing email all day, doing spreadsheets all day, and we kind of lose track of what it was that made business a lot of fun. So I always say that I would love to put some playback in your day. Well, we put some buck in your bottomline, and that's what really drives me David.
David: Well, that is a great goal, because if you can help others, then eventually you will be helping yourself. What goes around, usually comes around, doesn't it?
Anne: Absolutely.
David: Now, before we get further into this, I noticed on your website that you've got some great giveaway products. Can you tell us about those?
Anne: Sure, you bet. I'm a big fan of giving away something of value. I love to help people learn, I love to help people improve their businesses. So what you'll find when you go to my website, legendaryvalue.com, are some free assessments. You're going to find some free papers, some downloadable reports. We will talk about the reports in particular, in just a little while, because I think there's a great wakeup call for many small businesses. So you'll get some assessments, some freebies, and downloads. There is a lot of good information there for you.
David: Well, that's fantastic. Now, if I'm in small business and I think I'm doing okay, but I know there's room for improvement. Do you have some tips that could help us along the way? Something like step by step methods?
Anne: Absolutely. I'll give you five quick steps that you can do. I'm also going to let you know that I have a book coming out in the next week. It is called Profit In Plain Sight. It'll actually walk you through, in detail, each of the five steps that I'm going to share with you right now. I've also put together a little quick video for your visitors if they send an email to wealthy @ legendaryvalue.com. It's a free video, it'll just take them through anything, in case they're in their cars today and they can't quite take note of everything that we're talking about that might be useful to them.
So if you look at the five key steps in profit in plain sight, the first one is really Locking In On Customer Loyalty. Now, whether or not you're in a situation wherein you're expecting a big order from a customer and they go to the competition... I think we've all been in that situation before, haven't we?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: And you wonder what happened... why did they go to the competition? You did a great proposal, you had a great product, you thought you were making progress, and you thought the deal was yours. There are some basic steps that you can do to lock down how loyal a customer really is to you and whether or not they're likely to go to your competition, especially for small businesses. One order can really make or break it. So it's very important that you get a very clear sense of that. So step one is getting a clear sense of customer loyalty and using some proven tools. We'll share the video in getting the sense of how we do that.
Second piece of the puzzle is Managing Your Topline Growth, your revenue. Now, I'm going to challenge your readers with the idea that almost all of us, at one time or another, have fallen through what I call the revenue trap. And that is, we focus on the revenue to the exclusion of whether or not we make any money. I'm sure some of your readers are shaking their heads right now, sort of saying, "Yes, I've got customers that I've lost money on." Well I don't know about them, but in business school, I have also taught that the customer writes the check, not the other way around. So getting stuck in the revenue trap means that your topline looks really good. You're growing your business this way, you've sold a lot of products, and you've got nothing to show for it. There's a very simple way of plugging all those profit leaks and it comes into a very simple concept, where you basically figure out who your most profitable customers are, and you make sure you keep them. You figure out who your marginally profitable customers are, the ones who are kind of so-so, and there are some great little strategies you can use to either improve their profitability or help them do more profitable business with you. The third one is what I call the vampire customers. Those are the ones you know are costing you money and you've got to plug those leaks. Now probably some of your readers or probably even you as well, David, you're shaking your head and saying, "Oh, sounds like accounting, profit per customer. We don't calculate profit per customer, I don't know how to figure that out." That's why a lot of people stay stuck in the revenue trap. So let me give you a simple little example of how we do that. David, you've got customers, yes?
David: Yes.
Anne: Okay. How many of them pay you on time? And does that impact their profitability to you, if you're financing them?
David: Oh, absolutely.
Anne: And you know exactly who they are, don't you? You don't need any fancy accountants to know who pays you on time and who doesn't. Have you got customers who are really high hassle, high maintenance, versus the ones who are just a pleasure to do business with?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: For every company, there's about half a dozen different factors like that. Those that you can just eyeball and say, "These are the ones that are in pretty good shape, these are the ones that have few issues, and these are the ones that are costing us a bundle."
David: So, what's the next step?
Anne: Well, I gave you the first two steps. The first one is to really lock in to your customer loyalty through very simple conversation techniques. Number two was about topline growth. You have to make sure that you're going after topline growth, but you can't do it at the expense of profitability.
Now, let me give you a third way. It sort of blends the topline revenues as well as the bottomline profit. Simply, Look For One Percent Everywhere In Your Business. Now, in the video, I'm actually going to show on a white board a little calculation that you do to figure out what an impact of one percent in terms of either increased revenue or decreased costs means to your business. But I'll give your readers the ballpark figures for most businesses. By simply shifting by one percent more revenue or one percent less cost, it's going to make a difference on the bottomline, somewhere between 15 and 50 percent.
David: No way.
Anne: Absolutely. Find one percent everywhere in your company and it will transform your business.
David: So let's keep going Anne. What's next?
Anne: Number four. Are you ready for another big tip?
David: Yes, go ahead.
Anne: So here's idea number four: Differentiating From The Competition. It is difficult for most of us. These days, we all tend to look a little bit the same, and when our customers see us looking the same, they grind us on price. We lose our one percent advantage, right? Because we start discounting more and discounting less. I have a little free tip for you. If you're used to doing a ten percent discount, do a nine percent discount. There's one percent for you right there. Let me get back to you on differentiating from the competition. David, do you love travelling by airline these days?
David: I can't say it's my favorite hobby, but...
Anne: Not your favorite hobby, but when you think about it, the plane usually takes off from the right airport, it usually lands, and it usually lands in the right spot. So there's no quality issue is there? They're doing what they promised you they would do by taking you in a different spot. So why do we all hate airline travels so much, when they're technically providing us the product and service that we bought from them? It's the experience, isn't it?
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: The last one is Innovation And Creativity. They are almost in everyone's to-do list. I've yet to meet a person, entrepreneur, big business owner, small business owner, and midsize business owner who actually has a plan to do it. Is innovation a big thing for you folks down in Australia?
David: Oh absolutely. You've got to keep moving, otherwise you'll become stagnant.
Anne: Right. But guess what? Not all of us have the next iPhone S, right? Usually innovation is associated with R and D, research and development, associated with big budgets, and associated with a huge risk of failure. And guess what that approached innovation is, what actually drives invention? You remember the segway? We all know the story of the segway, that wonderful little machine that will change the future of the world, that really cool invention. And now they're just little two wheels for those things that run around in the airports now and then. They never did take over the world.
David: No, not quite.
Anne: The difference between innovation, which actually solves all your problems, and invention, which is just very cool stuff that no one wants to buy.
David: Yes, that's right.
Anne: The last chapter that I have in the book, and the last piece that I'll share in the video, that I'll put together for you folks, is a little bit about very simple ways of innovating. And it's not unlike the story that I just gave you about the hotel that I stayed at. Oftentimes, the innovations that we can do don't have anything to do with business or our product. It's often simply the way we make our customers feel. That little extra catch, that little extra mile, something that costs us almost nothing but solves the problems for them.
David: Right, absolutely. Well, it looks like we may have to continue this conversation at a later time Anne, but before that, if you can tell us how to get in contact with you and get a copy of your book...
Anne: The book, Profit In Plain Sight, will be released in six weeks time and it will be on Amazon, available broadly around the world. If you want to get started a little bit easily and a little more quickly, all you have to do is send me a quick email to wealthy@legendaryvalue.com, and what I'll do is I'll just send you back three little videos, about 15 minutes long. It's going to take you through those five areas that we talked about. We're going to have a few little quick solutions for you and it's going to point you in the direction of the book when it comes off the presses and is available to you. You're very welcome to start this whole process at no charge whatsoever, so, invest your time watching this video. And if you feel like you want to step up a little bit more, the book will be available to you. There are links throughout the book and more free training videos, and there's also something that I call Profit U, Profit University, and it gives you the full real deal in terms of the agenda you need to follow every week on how to make it happen.
David: Thank you so much Anne, I really appreciate your joining us today.
