I was delighted to be able to ask Jo Haigh a few key questions recently,  Jo is author of Buying and Selling a Business and The Business Rules and a leading business consultant.  Jo can be found at http://www.jo-haigh.com

In your book The Business Rules you give over 100 potential pitfalls for business owners.  I think many of us who have started businesses can relate to these and sheer amount of issues to get to grips with.  What would you advise a business owner do to ensure their business is fit for purpose without having to know all the minutiae of law etc?

Get a mentor or, if your business is a bit more mature, a NED. These people will know a lot more than you will ever know simply by the fact they have been there before and will have rather more grey hairs than you.

In your work with clients, what do you see as the biggest and most worrying mistakes business owners are making?

Two things; if they are looking to sell and they’re being too greedy to such an extent they will never sell then they need to realign their thoughts in just the same way as in the housing market.

And on a day to day basis they are not watching their cash/  After all,  you can be very profitable but you can only run out of cash the once and profit and cash are rarely the same.

In your book, Buying and Selling a Business, you lay out the steps involved in the two sides of a business sale, from the perspective of the owner, what do you feel are the most important steps to get right when considering selling a business?

Be realistic in value and timing of the sale. It now takes about nine months to get to completion and buyers who do not have cash are going to take even longer if indeed they do manage to get any at all.

Also this is a game of brinkmanship so make a list of the ½ dozen items you will not compromise on no matter what and keep it with you at all times.

What can a business owner do within their business to plan for a future sale rather than dealing with it when they finally decide to sell?

Management is the most important thing of value in a sale make yourself redundant and concentrate on building a team that will add more value to a proposition than anything else you do.

A big concern for many small business owners, whose focus is often on bringing in business, is what’s happening financially.  Without an FD or equivalent, what advice you would you give small business owners to ensure their business is on a sound financial footing?

Do a cash flow each week for the next month always err on the side of caution as things never go according to plan cash is the most important thing is always the cash.  Then as soon as they can afford look to take on a FD type support role there are lots of these companies that provide these e.g. FD solutions this is not the same as your accountants these are much more commercial people and are cost effective as you dive into them as and when.

With most people looking at the gloomy side of the economy, what do you see as the opportunities for small business owners today to strengthen their business?

Keep looking for your differential people value personal touches above all else generally business is done with people you like and trust so make sure that’s always you keep in touch with clients and prospects but don’t bombard people. And finally, stay positive, work hard and be kind to yourself.

The world of busines, marketing and social media changes rapidly.

You already know that, as a business coach, you need to be at the very least one step ahead of your clients!

So in an information-rich, time-poor world, how do you keep up to date easily?

Well, of course, there’s RSS or Really Simple Syndication.

This allows you to have all the latest posts from industry blogs you find useful in one simple place.

I use Google Reader and although I can’t honestly say I’ve checked out its competition, it’s never given me reason to.  It works.

If you’re new to RSS and your reader, then you’ll have a blank page – which let’s face it, is not going to inspire you!

So how do you find good blogs?

1. Search a blog directory such as Technorati using your core areas of interest, eg. “marketing”, “social media” etc
2. Similarly, Google your industry terms and add “blog” to them.  So for instance, search “online marketing blog”, “business blog”, “sem marketing blog”.
3. Whilst visiting each blog, look out for blogrolls.  These are lists of other useful blogs recommended by the blog author.
4. Read a book and liked it? Search the author’s name and see if they have a blog. They almost certainly will.
5. Look for blogs from people you follow on social media platforms. These will usually have more comprehensive content than their social postings.

Firstly, I have to apologise for the big gap between this post and the previous.  I have been in the throes of launching the Rapid Results Business Coaching Programme and must admit my focus was taken off the blog!

As I was working with my new business-coaches-in-training, I got to thinking about the fact that, whilst each of them will learn the core skills and all the approaches that can be used to work with a business owner, they will also each have their own unique qualities that make them more or less suited to a particular kind of client.

Take me.  I am great at getting things started and I can carry that skill across to clients who are either just starting off or who have a business that is stuck.

I have a real knack for helping find a number of key strategies and tactics that bring results quickly and seed-fund further growth and the motivation to stick with it.

But I am less interested and therefore less good at taking a long established business and systematising it.  It’s just not my thing.  Nor have I have ever dealt with a franchise.  Or sold a company.

That doesn’t mean I can’t help a client who has these needs by using all the small-business coaching tools, processes and structures at my disposal.  I could!  But I don’t believe I would be as good as, or as confident as, someone who has made this their “thing”.

Now here’s the great thing.  Anything can be learned.  The question is, as a business coach, what interests you?  What excites you?  What makes you feel great about what you do?

For me, it’s helping people get results that get them on their way and time and again I have helped business people kick start from scratch or move from a position of stuckness.

What is it for you?

Perhaps you excel at making teams get brilliant results.  Maybe you can number crunch metrics and help the owner get stunning clarity on their financial position and needs.  Maybe you understand how to launch onto the global stage, or how to use social media for real results, or how to buy a company.

Answer this question and you’ll start to stand out from the crowd and be a truly sought-after business coach.

Business coaches have taken a step that many coaches never do.  They have decided to specialise.  Small business coaches are specialising further and small business coaches working with the hospitality industry yet further.

Now, it’s a well worn question but if you were a hotelier, who would choose here if all else was equal?  The generic coach, the business coach, the small business coach or the hospitality coach?  It’s a no brainer if the last coach has results to back up their specialism.

And who would you choose if the last of these was considerably dearer?  Well, the choice certainly gets more complicated but if you really feel that the specialism allows you to get the results you’re after, you’ll pay for it, right?

I was inspired to write this post because I’m looking for a specialist in social media marketing right now, specifically someone who can help spread the great content that my course heads are creating on their blogs.

What fascinates me is that, from the huge list of respondents, I’ll have people who have one core skill such as social media marketing (which, by the way, is getting ever harder to call a single core skill as the each platform get individually more complex and demanding of knowledge) and I’ll have people who claim to be experts in social media, data entry, SEO, SEM, craiglist…in fact. don’t just take my word for it.  Have a look:

Now look what they’re charging! $2.22 per hour.  I have to say my heart goes out to them!

If they became true experts at one thing, they’d have more business and charge more money.

It’s like going to a pub and you open up the menu and every kind of food type is there! Yep! We’ve all seen them.  Faux leather covers, laminated inner pages covered in sticky stuff and salt and a who’s who of culinary cliche!  Indian, Thai, Chinese, English, Italian; burgers, pasta, curries and fish vie for attention….it’s just a list of every recognisable food type you can imagine.

Yet, if you decide to go out for an Indian, do you think, let’s go that pub that does everything?  No, of course not!

At best, you’ll go there for convenience or because of a different aspect to the experience – live sports, it’s your local or you want to see your mates for a drink, etc.

So I’m calling on you to ask yourself, who are you? The specialist who charges what you’re worth or the jack of all trades who charges what you can get?

Do you agree? Let me know your thoughts below.

A lot of people are lazy!

They do the same old things in the same old ways and wonder why results don’t change.

Many small business coaches are no different.

They attend the same old networking events and meet the same old people.  Leads dry up and their daily tweet and Facebook post produce no discernible interest!  Then they complain times are tough!

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As a local coach you can take control of how you find clients.

Yes, I said, find clients.

For all the hype around attraction marketing and inbound marketing, the reality is these strategies take time.  They’re vital for the long haul but they’re not going to work overnight.

You need to go out looking if you want success!

Here’s how you can take control of how you find clients.  I call it Local Market Mapping.

You’re going to get to know your local area inside out.  And it’s easy.

To do this you need an open mind and a determination to follow this through without questioning the results as you go.  You see, too often we pre-judge who might work with us and simply miss a whole group of businesses who need are help AND can afford it.

So here’s what you need to do.

1. Take a walk.  Walk down your high street and make a note of every single small business you come across.  Notice the B&Bs, the hotels, the shops, the garages, the dentists, solicitors, the cafes and restaurants, the hairdressers and tanning shops, the health shops and pawnshops.  Notice them all and write them in a notebook.  Take as much factual information as possible – name, address, website, phone number.  Don’t judge just write.  Make it fun and treat yourself to a coffee in a future’s client’s coffee shop!
2. Now find your local business parks.  I don’t mean the ones with McDonalds, Currys and the hypermarket.  I mean the hidden away ones.  The ones that have affordable commercial space for garages, serviced offices, private storage facilities, call centres and more.  Walk around it.  Discover what businesses are there and write it all down.  You’ll be amazed at businesses you couldn’t even have conceived of nevermind approached!  Write it all down!
3. Now search online for local business networks.  Visit their sites and see who their members are and, you guessed it, write it all down.
4. Now make a list of all the small business types you can think of – anything and everything.  Brain storm til your eyes are popping out and your brain is melting.  Don’t edit  the list or try to judge if they’re useful business types.  Just write, write, write.  And with this list (and this might be a bit tedious but nothing worth having is free of some hard work) type them into Google one at a time adding your town name to produce information on each of those business types in your area.  And of course write it all down.
5. Finally collate all this information in a way that makes sense to you.  You could try ordering it by industry type, location, size, priority to secure or whatever approach suits you.

And that’s it! You’re done.

Well, OK, that’s the first step at least! You now have a thorough, personally constructed map of your local small business landscape.

“OK, now what?” you might be thinking.  “I could have got that from a Thomson Local!”

No you couldn’t!  You might have got the names and addresses but you wouldn’t have immersed yourself in the discovery process, you wouldn’t have personally realised how much you had been missing out on by going to the one weekly network event.  You wouldn’t have discovered the things you found surprisingly intriguing.  You wouldn’t have made the comparisons between companies that you naturally made as you went.  You wouldn’t have both consciously and unconsciously been noticing things: what the companies are doing well or doing badly; where they ranked on search engines; how they actually look; and so so much more.

This is YOUR map not just a list of people in a directory. And from this you can begin to plot your way forward.  Maybe you’ll take one sector at a time such as restaurants and look at how they’re marketing themselves.  Or maybe you’ll go with what jumped out at you.  Maybe you’ll use direct mail which clearly reflects your new-found understanding of the local landscape or maybe you’ll create a local workshop that suits the needs that you have uncovered as you went along.

The map is just the start but it one of the very best ways to truly get to know your landscape and find your small business coaching clients.

Has this helped?  Do you have any questions?