Financial Intelligence: Are You Making Sense?

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,

but to do what lies clearly at hand. -Thomas Carlyle

Financial Intelligence sounds like a new industry buzz term, until you get to the root of what it really means. It’s a manifestation of the process that transforms a visionary into a success. In his new book “Increasing Your Financial IQ,” Robert Kiyosaki stresses his belief that those who take on financial challenges become smarter and thus, become wealthier. Similarly, for your business financial IQ to be high, you must possess in-depth knowledge of the systems that successfully generate new business and those that simply do not work.

Currently, how do you harvest, process and apply the information you take in for your business? Having a coveted top spot with the search engines won’t help you develop new customer relationships if you can’t or don’t know how to track, analyze and follow-up on all the inquiries you receive. You can do everything right: host networking events and webinars, attend seminars and luncheons, advertise locally and online, and publish books, newsletters & blogs. However, when the e-mail or phone inquiries begin, what then? If your business contacts an interested prospect, how is that contact task measured? These factors are part of what makes up your business financial IQ.

Virtualization Management – Knowledge at Your Fingertips

Every pun intended. As the fiscal year comes to a close, did you meet or surpass your January 2008 projections? If not, then you may consider the flexibility and innovation of Virtualization Management to improve your current situation. Most successful companies now look quite different than they did at inception. To achieve and sustain success, a business must take advantage of developing technologies to leverage their ROI. You can revolutionize your business operations and stimulate revenues with virtualization management systems. Let’s define how you can take the guesswork and frustration out of your strategic planning initiatives:

Imagine for a moment if your company could:

· Capture 100% of all prospective inquiries.

· Organize, track & measure the effectiveness of the sales/marketing efforts.

· Visually map out a planner for everyone in the company to utilize. All tasks clearly defined and monitored for completion and follow-up.

· Analyze and measure what tasks, actions, processes and responses work and those that don’t – needing immediate attention.

· Establish control over the individual departments and enable them to work together for maximum efficiency and ROI. Task management defines the steps toward desired results.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”- Dale Carnegie

Get SMARTs

How would having this knowledge make you feel about the future of your business? With virtualization management systems, your business could reduce acquisition costs, decrease lackluster performances and capture all daily inquiries. Knowledge is power, so how well are you using your business SMARTs? SMARTs are the vital components which empower you to obtain the results you seek:

S – Salesforce has to be effective to generate revenue and grow your business. In other words, no customers, no business, NO MONEY.

M – Marketing gets your message out; branding your business brings in the desired results.

A – Accounting is extremely crucial to the business itself. How do you invoice your customers? Do you know the lifetime value of your customers? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? How many inquiries are captured? How many are converted to actual clients?

R – Research & Development-What are you actually selling, a product or a service? Could it be something more? Do you know how the numbers work? What works and what doesn’t?

T – Team or staff – departments, outside vendors and your marketing staff. Do they work together for a common objective? Are you able to track their assignments? Do you see when they follow-up with the inquiry?

S – Systems that work together to maximize your return on investment. Are you able to organize, follow-up, assign tasks, see the results and then analyze the best solutions? Are you just hoping it gets done?

Sharpen Your Business Financial IQ

Knowledge of your business and its systems and processes is vital; otherwise, how do you know you’re not going out of business? Companies today face the unfortunate results of not bringing in more customers than their rates of attrition. The only way to manage attrition is to measure and improve retention while encouraging steady growth. Virtualization management accomplishes these goals and arms you with the data – knowledge – you need to make critical financial decisions for your business.

Your business financial IQ is directly linked to your knowledge of customer value. The value of a customer is determined by their contribution to revenues and purchase frequency. If you can’t determine a customer’s value, you can’t improve it. Therefore, you can’t improve your attrition rate because you don’t know what it is. For instance, someone who has purchased from you already and is expected to do so again – this is how you determine the value of a customer.

Perhaps you feel confident knowing that 80% of your revenues are generated by 20% of your customers. Understanding who that 20% represents is extremely important. However, the ability to identify and frequently contact that other 80% could lead you to discover a huge untapped market within your own infrastructure. The easiest sale tends to be someone who has previously purchased from you or utilized your services. Generally, some attention may be all they need. Knowledge of what they want is the missing link. The challenge is for you to make that determination and then deliver it. Each time you are able to accomplish this, your business financial IQ increases and your revenues follow suit.