The key to the business market is your own business plan

The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.

When we met Earl Singh, he sought our help in trying to break into the business market.

After ten years in the business, Earl had built up a varied clientele that included contractors, nurses, farmers and seniors. The flow of business was steady, around $180,000 annually, but he was run ragged. He figured moving into the business market would allow him to generate more revenue with fewer clients. Before coming to see us, he had managed to book a number of appointments with business owner prospects, but a number of them had cancelled on him, and those who had agreed to see him gave him little time.

When I sat down with Earl I asked him to outline a typical appointment.

He told us about Brian Fenway, the owner of a machine parts company. After cancelling three times, Brian, at last, kept to an appointment, but during the meeting, Brian excused himself several times to take calls. Earl barely had a chance to talk to Brian. In the end, Brian apologized and suggested Earl call him in six months.

“What will happen in six months?”

“Hopefully Brian will have more time to see me.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked

“Well, no, I guess not.”

“The truth is you don’t know, and right now your plan for moving upmarket is really a lot of wishful thinking.”

Our coach and founder Norm Trainor asked Earl a hard-hitting question. “Earl, do you think Brian runs his business on wishful thinking?”

“Probably not.”

“Then why are you?”

Earl fell silent.

“So what should I be doing?” Earl asked.

Before I answered that, I asked Earl whether or not he had a plan for his business -- a question I already knew the answer to.

Earl shook his head, no.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Norm said. “In our experience 9 out of 10 advisors don’t have business plans. However, 10% do, and that 10% have a much easier time dealing with affluent business owners. There are two essential reasons for that.

“Firstly, when you develop and work a plan, you are relying on well-thought-out strategies, rather than wishful thinking.

“Secondly, the experience of running your own complex business will help you relate and add value to business owner clients.

“To explore these two reasons further, let’s revisit the Brian case. In that case, your appointment failed largely because Brian didn’t know much about who you were and how you could help him – conversely, you didn’t know much about Brian’s business.

“Developing a solid business plan will help solve these problems. A component of your business plan is your marketing plan, which outlines your strategy for establishing your prestige with prospects before you get face to face with them. For example, let’s say you’ve chosen machine parts businesses within South Western Ontario as a market. To develop prestige in this market your plan might be to join an industry association, write for their trade journals, attend their conferences, and conduct a direct mail campaign. Your immersion in this market will do more than just develop your prestige, it will give you valuable insight into the specific problems facing people in the machine parts business. As they get to know you, you are getting to know them.

“Your marketing plan needs to jive with the other aspects of your plan, such as your financials, and your resource plan. You’ll need to budget for your promotional activities and address the resources you will use to execute each activity. Are you going to hire someone? Part-time? Fulltime? What are you going to pay them? How? By the hour? On commission? You’ll also need to understand how your marketing strategies support your business objectives. Are these marketing initiatives creating the type of company you envision five years down the road? In fact, when we do business planning we begin with vision and work our way down through objectives, strategies, marketing, sales, resources, etc.”

“Developing a business plan sounds daunting,” Earl said.

“If you follow a template, you should be able to develop a draft of a business plan within a matter of hours. But to ensure its effectiveness, you should review and rework it on a regular basis. Don’t look at planning as drudgery. Planning is the exciting part of being in business. When you’re planning you are working on your business, rather than in it. While working in the business is a way to ensure revenue continues to flow, it’s not a growth strategy. Real growth comes from the effort of working on the business — business planning. Planning is your opportunity to capitalize on all your years of experience, to look at the trends in the industry, to figure out where things are heading, what new markets are opening up.

“Let’s imagine how your appointment with Brian would have gone if you had been implementing your business plan. Instead of seeing you as just another salesman, Brian, having come across you at a conference, through the association, or hearing you on the radio, would see you as a professional who knows his issues and can help him.”

“But what if he still says the timing is not right and that he wants to see me in six months?” Earl asked.

“Good question. That’s where your knowledge of his industry and your experience in running your own business come into play. Ask Brian what will be different in six months. That question is your way of opening Brian up to talking about his business, and his plan. And it’s where you can add value. With your knowledge of the industry and your own experience in running a business, you should be able to help Brian explore the possibilities. Perhaps Brian’s organization is overworked because it’s short of resources, in which case, you can explore Brian’s resource plan, because now you know how resource planning fits within the running of a business.”

“But I’m an advisor, not a business consultant.”

“Correct, but to see you as a trusted advisor, Brian needs to know that you have a deep understanding of the challenges he faces. When you demonstrate your knowledge of Brain’s business, you show him that you’re able to develop solutions suited to his specific needs.”

I suggested Earl enroll in a business planning workshop we were running with his sponsoring institution later in the month. Over the next couple of weeks, Earl completed a plan that outlined his vision to become an advisory firm specializing in serving the financial needs of small business owners. His plan sketched out the various markets he would move into over the next three years and included the various promotional strategies to reach one of his initial markets -- machine parts companies.

Eight months later, after joining the machine parts association, sponsoring a trade show, writing for a trade journal, and sending a newsletter to the association’s membership, Earl had established himself in the machine parts market. When he met with Brian again, he was able to talk intelligently about the issues in Brian’s business, about the technological innovations that would impact the industry, about a foreign competitor moving into the area, and new market opportunities. Earl was able to frame the discussion of Brian’s personal financial security within the world of Brian’s business. Brian became a client, and a powerful center of influence who introduced Earl to many of his industry colleagues.

Lessons Learned
Earl learned that one of the keys to penetrating the business market is to develop and utilize your own business plan. To work with CEOs Earl had to transition from being a financial advisor to acting as the CEO of an advisory firm. Going after the business market without a sound business plan is akin to perpetrating the old insurance industry mistake of trying to sell insurance without having your own insurance policy. Having your own business plan has two essential benefits:

1. One: your plan will ensure that you have a well-thought-out strategy for approaching your market. Rather than getting random appointments and crossing your fingers that you’ll make a good impression on your prospect, you will be establishing yourself in specifically chosen markets as a respected expert.
2. Two: your knowledge and personal experience of working your own business plan means that you can talk insightfully with your prospects and clients about their business issues. You’ll be able to ask informed questions about their plans and strategies, discuss options, and offer insights.

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The Covenant Group is referred to by many as the place entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and have authored the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High- Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.