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Essential business advice for SMEs
Twice awarded Global Award Winning Coach with Action Coach, Oxford-based business coach, Paul Avins, has a wealth of experience and knowledge in sales, sales management, marketing, personal development, training and business management, business coaching, and as a motivational speaker.
In part 2 of our interview with Paul, he dispenses invaluable advice for SMEs – from how to sell more in a recession to how to leverage your expertise.
Read part 1 of the interview: Business coaching for growth
Read part 3 of the interview: Digital marketing strategy, Twitter, video and other things that confuse businesses
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What’s the most crucial piece of business advice you can give to SMEs?
Paul Avins: Right now, you’ve got to manage your costs really ruthlessly. Focus on your core business and really keep control of your cash flow. Cash is everything - lack of cash kills businesses more than lack of profitability. Get control of your business, control the cash, control the expenses and focus on driving sales.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): I get the impression that ‘motivational speaking’ can be seen as ‘light weight’ by some people – so what makes you different as a speaker?
Paul Avins: I’ve never liked the tag ‘motivational speaker’, I prefer a ‘content speaker’ not motivational. I give people proven techniques and content, not just positive mental attitude stuff. Here’s seven things you can do to increase your cash flow, here’s five things to convert more sales. I deliver practical advice that people can use that’s proven to work. My aim is to get you to take action with the information I’m giving you.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What’s been the main topic of a recent event or speaking engagement? Are people tiring of the depressing ‘R’ word – recession?
Paul Avins: More multi-millionaires have been created in recessions that any other time. People get rich in bad times because the opportunities are greater. I’m sick of talking about the recession. You can choose not to participate in the recession. It starts with the belief that you can have a great year and you can make money in a good market or a bad market - it’s whether your skill level is big enough and you know what to do. There are different strategies to make money in a downturn than there are in a growing market. The question is what are you doing right now to grow your business?
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What’s a sure-fire way to increase sales?
Paul Avins: Speed of response. When someone contacts your business and says I am interested in you quoting me or talking to me about it, the faster you respond the more business you will win.
The other thing to do is to market more to your existing database. The words “I didn’t know you did that” when a customer goes elsewhere probably cost a business more money than anything else. Talk to your database more, communicate more with them.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Do businesses need to be selling and marketing differently in the current climate as opposed to during ‘boom’ years?
Paul Avins: It’s different now - money isn’t as easily available, and the selling model has changed. It’s much more about building a relationship of trust. It’s about getting people to purchase something small so that they trust you first rather than trying to get them to buy something big.
If I spend £100 with you and you do a good job I’ll be more inclined to spend £500 with you. If you want a £50,000 order from a client you’ve often got to build a £50,000 relationship. It’s easier to build that relationship with a client who’s spent £5000 than it is for someone who doesn’t know who you are and hasn’t spent any money with you.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): You must have a lot of contacts – how do you maintain and develop your business relationships?
Paul Avins: The value of any business but especially the service business is based on its relationships - that’s relationships with customers, suppliers, partners. I’ve built a team around me to do this, it’s not just me. We work hard at that, and survey our customers to see what else they want from us, how we can help them. We make it a priority to stay in touch and talk to them and communicate with them. It’s always good to put a bit of time away in the diary to just randomly ring people to see how they’re doing. Using time to connect, not sell.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): How do your leverage your expertise as an individual to reach a wider audience and grow your own business?
Paul Avins: Leverage is the key to business success. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in you’ve got to find a way to do more with less. For me, leverage is things like speaking. If there are 500 businesses in the room I get to speak to 500 people within an hour which would take me 500 hours if I did it one-on-one.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What’s the Oxford Wealth Club, and how does it work?
Paul Avins: We’ve created a unique networking environment, I’m really proud of it. Members get together every fortnight and I can teach specific techniques and strategies in small bite size chunks so that they could take them away and then apply them and come back in two weeks and learn something else. The concept of the club is education first, then it’s about team work and being in an environment where there are other people on the journey with you, who you can talk to, network with, build relationships with, share ideas with. The final part is the business generation - who can you pass leads to within the club and who can you do business with.