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The Business Advisor of the Future - will you have what it takes to succeed?
By James Mason, Managing Director of Mindshop, September 2010
World renown business philosopher, Peter Drucker was wisely once quoted as saying: “There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Determining what Business Advisors will ‘stop doing’ or what they will ‘say no’ to will be critical to ensuring their future success. Many advisors globally have reached a point after years of adopting the same approach and constantly adding new products / services to their offering where their business model, business tools and approach to strategy delivery have become either too complex or to clinical. Either way the end results are short-term projects, confused clients, long sales cycles and a difficult business to run. As leading business author, Edward de Bono once said: 'Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.'
Every 6 to 12 months Business Advisors need to ask themselves when looking at their strategies:
- What will we ‘say no’ to?
- What will we ‘stop doing’?
Dependant on the direction of each Business Advisor this could raise issues / opportunities such as:
- Not doing government tenders
- Not offering a specific service / product line any longer
- Outsourcing aspects of their business model
- Not spending months developing their own intellectual property
- Not servicing a remote region
- Not doing one-off workshops
- Not doing report writing for clients
With the end result being a clearer focus for the business, winning more retainer based work, freeing up more time and gaining greater referrals.
Building on the above points and to assist Business Advisors determine what first steps to take for future success we have compiled the 10 key traits of a future business advisor.
To start the process first analyse WHERE you want to be with regard to your advisory business in 5 years time. This will provide a peg in the ground for the amount of evolution required for you as a Business Advisor. Use this to help in the gap analysis exercise (see below):
Top 10 traits of a Future Business Advisor
Rate on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being ‘Very Low’ and +5 being ‘Very High’ how much you agree with each statement below. With this scoring in mind identify on a piece of paper for each question where you are NOW, then WHERE you want to be and finally calculate the GAP (difference between NOW and WHERE score) to find your three biggest issues:
Question
- I am clearly known for a specific advisory niche?
- I have created a strong virtual network of other specialists, advisors or referral sources ?
- I have a simple, clear approach to developing strategies for clients?
- I am constantly learning and adapting my approaches to doing business?
- I am not reliant on prescriptive processes or multimedia products for my strategy delivery?
- I am 80% retainer based with my advisory business model and 20% project based?
- I sell by being a brilliant problem solver rather than by having to 'pitch' to businesses?
- I have strong life-balance?
- I have an innovative, consistent contact program with all my existing / prospective clients?
- I have a high level of comfort with new technologies and embed them into all aspects of my business?
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