As a reward you will receive a FREE copy of our 36 page report "How to win profitable customers away from competitors" and as a bonus "Marketing Secrets For Small Businesses".

I respect your privacy and won't pass on your email address. All my emails include an option to opt-out if for any reason you are not delighted with the quality of business development advice.rnatively please read on because we believe we can help.

Our profit improvement consultancy services include:

Business Coaching helps you to develop the skills, abilities and determination to build a bigger, better business using our TAR (thinking - action - results) coaching approach.

Impact of our business coaching on your business - Profit Improvement.

Monthly Financial Review provides reassurance that performance is being monitored. It identifies if things are going wrong quickly so that they can be corrected at the smallest cost. More positively it identifies new opportunities that can be seized before a competitor notices them.

Impact of implementing our monthly financial review process on your business - Profit Improvement.

Decision Support also provides reassurance for those difficult decisions but by providing the relevant information to support the decision, it increases the probability of making a good decision and reduces the likelihood of making a costly mistake.

Impact of using our decision support services - Profit Improvement.

Strategic Business Planning takes a high level look at how and where you compete so that you can outperform your competitors and earn higher profits.

In the end, your results depend entirely on your strategy and how well your people implement it. 

A great strategy applied to a real opportunity, well implemented will produce high profits. A poor strategy, poor implementation or a poor opportunity will lead to frustration, disappointment and poor profitability.

Impact of our strategic business planning workshops - Profit Improvement.

Customer Value Analysis is the heart of our business strategy process as it takes a detailed look at how your company differentiates itself from your competitors and captures a good profit through effective pricing.

Impact of using customer value analysis in your business - Profit Improvement.

Operational Process Improvement is designed to produce better, faster, more reliable, lower cost processes.

Imagine the benefits providing your customers with a consistently high quality and reliable service that have been designed to be provided efficiently and effectively. 

Impact of improving your processes - Profit Improvement.

Financial Training helps you understand and use financial information to improve your business.

It also provides training, coaching and mentoring for your staff so that they can provide you with the information you need, when you need it.

Impact of improving the financial skills and understanding of you and your staff - Profit Improvement.

See the Business Coaching Blog for the latest business development ideas and profit building strategies.

Profit Improvement Consultancy Services

Our Profit Improvement Consultancy Services are a uniquely designed combination of all these activities.

The exact ingredients depend on your company's own unique needs.

Profit Improvement can only come from a combination of three sources:

1. An increase in the volumes sold (new customers or existing customers buy more).

2. An increase in the average selling prices.

3. A reduction in the costs incurred by the business

Sometimes a change will involve two of these factors moving in opposite directions and that is where our decision support and business modelling service is so important.

Profit improvement can be counter-intuitive.


Should you get bigger or smaller?

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that business performance can be improved by extra sales and that you just need more orders from more customers.

Of course, more sales means more cash coming into your business so sometimes this is the right strategy but beware of cutting prices to increase your sales.

Many successful business turnarounds are based on making the business smaller. That's because with extra size comes complexity, big increases in costs and more headaches. It often also means more compromises as you try to offer products and services to a wider range of customers.

Profitable growth is fantastic but it is often an illusion that looks great on paper but ....

In these turnarounds, results improve by increasing your focus on the particular types of customers who are willing to pay a premium price for services that closely meet their requirements.

So should your aim be to get bigger or smaller? It really depends on your situation and that's why one of the first things we do is to identify and evaluate the options available to you.

What do you think about when you consider buying business advice?

Are you put off the idea of buying professional business advice because of the high hourly or daily fees with no guarantee of success? 

Are you unclear whether you want the lowest priced advisor or the most expensive?

Are you uncertain how you can tell whether the business advisor is worth the money?

What does it mean when you ask the firm how they price? Is it on an hourly or daily rate, a fixed price for the job or based on results? Is the fee payable at the start or the end?

What do the answers say to you?

What happens if your business advisor is rewarded on profit generated in your business?

1. The emphasis moves from buying and selling professional hours to  a relationship based on creating value for your business. In other words it becomes a true partnership for profit.

2. Risks are shared. You no longer face the possibility of having a big invoice at the end with few tangible benefits.

3. Both you and your advisor must take a realistic assessment of the potential for profit from the very earliest stage. Both parties need the assignment to be a success and will have consistent objectives throughout the project.

4. Your advisor will take a keen interest in your business and the progress that you are making.

The true measure

The correct measure of the success of any assignment would be the difference between the profits made with and without the project. That difference is due to the project and the rewards could be shared.

Unfortunately this true measure is not possible to calculate. You either do the project or you don’t.

The next best option is an assessment of the effects of the project.
If the project relates to a small part of the business, it can be examined in detail and the financial effects can be calculated.

It’s the same principle as when you replace an old machine with a new one. You can look at the costs of the old machine, the costs of the new machine, standardise the output and calculate the benefit.
Unfortunately the wider the scope on all  the different areas of your business, the more difficult it is to make a detailed assessment. As the scope broadens so do the number of all the other issues that could have an effect on performance.

But just because it is difficult to assess doesn’t mean that the business advisory fees should automatically fall back to a basis that depends on the hours that the advisor works (hourly rate) or intends to work (fixed fee).

That’s input rather than output thinking.

Your customers don’t care about how much it costs you to provide your products and service. They only care about the benefits they get.

So why should it be different if you are buying business advisory services from a business consultant? We don’t think it should be.

If you come to me with wanting to increase your profits by an extra £100,000 and I had a magic wand that I could wave, how much would you pay me?

Would you be saying "It takes 10 seconds to wave your magic wand so if your hourly rate is as high as £1,000 per hour, I'll pay you £2.78 to wave it"

Do you think I'd be tempted to wave it for you? I gain by £2.78 and yoiu gain by £99,997.22!

Or would I want to go and find people who appreciate my skills and recognise the value to them. People who came to me and said "Paul, I've got a deal for you - we'll go fifty/fifty - are you interested?"

With business advisors, consultants and coaches you're not by time, you are buying the skills and abilities to get the results you want.

Our solution

For Profit Improvement assignments I look to agree a fee structure that you and I both believe is fair to each of us:

1. A reduced hourly rate or fixed fee charged on a monthly basis.

2. A profit share scheme designed to provide the majority of fees. Any monthly fees paid are automatically deducted from our share of the profits so that the gain for your company is substantial.

Why isn’t all the fee profit related?

For small business coaching assignments it can be. 

I am confident in my ability to increase profits for any business that I choose to work with.

For larger jobs there are two reasons why I would look to split any fee between a time basis and a results basis:

1.   The calculation of the gain from the project is subjective. The bigger the business, the more people involved, the bigger the potential gain and the bigger the fee.

Each of these increases the likelihood for disagreeing on what the true benefits of the project have been.

2.   You don’t want to hand over the decision making control of your business to me and I don’t want you to. But it’s only by having full control of all the decisions that I could accept full responsibility for your profits on a big project.

Why don't other business consultants work this way?

To be fair a few do but most want you to accept the risk of project and will expect a time based fee. Some will even want you to pay a large proportion of the fee at the start before they do any work.

Some consultants offer satisfaction guarantees but how often have you failed to claim against a guarantee because you know the fault lies mainly or partly with you?

I offer these results based fees through the partners for profit approach for a number of reasons:

1 - I am trying to look at the project from your point of view. I know that I am good and I have confidence in the other people I may introduce. I have a good idea of how well my skills will carry across different types and sizes of business.

I am skilled at looking at a business and assessing the opportunity for profit improvement and I'd like to think that I am a good judge of the strength of your motivation for improvement and success.

2 - I know from my own research and general discussions that high business consultancy fees can frighten off business owners and senior management of private and family owned businesses.

If you have a great opportunity to improve, you really want and need to make it happen and we have a great rapport, I don't want to put restrictions in your way.

3 - I can afford to take the time to work with you while you see the results for yourself. With small business coaching it's like an investment portfolio, the exposure and cost of one project going wrong is low.

There is no magic wand to business improvement and it will take some time for the results to show through in your sales figures and monthly accounts. I know the results will come from the actions agreed and I don't want you to be worse off during the build-up period.

4 - I accept that it is my responsibility help you project manage the improvement plan. Provided we've established the right relationship at the start, I have confidence in my ability to keep you on track.

5 - I am committed to delivering value for money and extra growth and profits. If for whatever reason the project doesn't go well, I don't want your money because I haven't delivered the promise you bought.

6 - Because I expect the project to be successful and because I am sharing the risks, I expect to earn more.

You see if I only charge for our time, my earnings are limited to the number of hours I can work. If I charge based on results my upside is unlimited.

Suppose I have a great idea about your business while I'm walking my dog first thing in the morning. That one idea could be worth £50,000 in profit to you but my clock hasn't started running. What do I charge? How does that fit into the input thinking in most consultancy pricing arrangements?

Our Profit Improvement Process

Before making plans for the future we have to make sure that we understand the current situation and we start with a business health check.

The P&CS health check follows our “four pathways” methodology.

Depending on the results of the health check which we talk you through in detail, we then recommend a particular combination of our core services.

The Next Stage

Call us on 0121 554 4057 to discuss your situation and we’ll send you copies of our health check and arrange a follow up meeting.

While it's true that most of our services are targeted at companies in Birmingham and the West Midlands we also offer a long range solution for other UK companies that substitutes face-to-face meetings with business coaching by telephone and email.

Are you making some of the common mistakes that could be holding back your business and costing you thousands of pounds in lost profit - find out here business owners, marketing, sales, employees or finance.