The Business of Life

During this momentus economic shift, it is doubtful that your business is NOT affected. Most of us are experiencing some major setbacks, changes, and stagnation that there’s not much we think we can do about but wait.

The Sapini Group can help. We have some great ideas to keep talent, keep things moving, and above all, keep afloat during this downturn.

Things to think about:

• Layoffs Are Not The Answer
• Focus On Client Relations
• Having the Right People is Essential
• What’s In It For You?

Exploring these issues with our help will allow you to regain control and save your bottom line.

Layoffs Are Not The Answer:
Your employees are at the heart of your business. In these stressful recessionary times employees respond best to leaders who can take on an inspiring and supportive role. This will create a productive emotional space that to take full advantage of work relationships. Rather than eliminating jobs, we will coach you in other strategies that save you money, such as:

1. Voluntary Reduction in Hours
2. Voluntary temporary Pay cut Reduction
3. Allocate Employees to Job Share
4. Increasing telecommuting opportunities

Focus On Client Relations:
During these stressful recessionary times, providing your clients more value than what they pay for it is key to a better and stronger relationship. This type of attitude will help create your client as your ambassador to other business. Here are some strategies to consider to getting inside the clients head:

1. Be Reliable and Dependable. You need to always there for the client, even in “dark” times, offering more support like pro-bono work.
2. Make it “Easy Schmeasy”. Do whatever it takes to make the client’s job easy. If they have to work, forget it.
3. Do not Finger Point. It is about working together vs. blaming or in-fighting.
4. Always be truthful and straight up and not be a “yes” person.
5. Add value; know the client’s environment and situation. What is that client up against in every way?
6. Add value to your solution beyond the obvious.
7. Make the client the hero of their organization for making the buying decision.

Having the Right People is Essential:
Your company’s success depends on its ability to hire the right people for the work that needs to be done. To ensure that you have the right people, here are some strategies to consider when building a team:

1. Designate roles and responsibilities. Defining the roles will create an opportunity to develop and measure the individual.
2. Have clear goal that has short and long milestones so that your staff can see and gain momentum as they achieve them.
3. Invite the right people. This is simply have the people with the ability contribute and deliver the desired outcome. They are specialist and enjoy the field of work that is needed.
4. Insist on commitment. This will allow everyone to facilitate themselves and ensure that the goal is always on track. This will create devotion in the team.

What’s In It For You?
You need to know what you want for business or your goal so that you can take bold steps to make it. Here some strategies to consider getting what want:

1. Accept every aspect of yourself and be comfortable with who you really are.
2. Find a balance between what you need to do and what you want to do.
3. Allow yourself to go for what you love and are very good at doing.
4. Challenge yourself to improve and grow.

What is a “Strategic Business Alliance?”

A Strategic Business Alliance is a mutually joint relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of decisive goals or to meet a business need while remaining autonomous organizations. The organizations agree to collaborate in the implementation of a business service where each brings their individual strengths and capabilities to the arrangement.

The Sapini group creates customized strategic business alliance to provide specific solutions tailored for individual clients. The alliance goal is to:

• Identify corporate stresses, sources of conflict and barriers to performance.
• Devise a strategy to gain sustainable competitive advantage, balancing imagination with calculated risk.
• Develop self-directed, inter-departmental work teams.
• Establish a leadership mentoring program for the next generation of managers to assure productivity and company growth.

The business alliance in action involves:

• Human Capital (employees, management, leadership)
• Resources (financial, physical, intellectual)
• Systems (management, technology, protocols, communications)
• All THREE are required and must work together!

Here are some essential elements of a strong business plan:

• Cover page-short identification and description of your business.
• Table of contents-allows readers to reference a specific section.
• Executive summary-overview of your total plan, outlining the steps you will take for success.
• Business background-highlights your skills and experience in the field.
• Marketing plan-details the products and services you’re offering, your market, pricing strategy, and plans for marketing and advertising your business.
• Action plan-details the specific action-items you will utilize to create and deliver your products and services.
• Financial management, statements, and projections-source of start-up capital, monthly budgets, projected expenditures, expected return on investment, projected balance sheets, accounting strategy, and more.
• Operations-hiring procedures, insurance, leasing, equipment and other expected operational costs.
• Closing statement-confirmation of goals and objectives for a successful business.
• Appendix- statistical analyses, sample marketing materials, and resumes.

Is there a difference between instincts and feelings?

Before I proceed, it is important that we understand what is meant by both. “Instinct” means impulse, and gut feeling. Instinct never fails and gives limited access to your desired goal. Instinct makes us move according to our physical needs and signals.

In the other hand, “Feeling” means information acquired through learning of different subjects. Feeling gives us control over the desired demand of nature. Feeling is calculating.

It is said that people who act on instinct and impulse may not always be right but often come victorious whereas people using their knowledge and skill are bound to succeed with minimum exposure to risks and hazards. Having said that, does it matter how we came up with a decision?

The short answer is that it truly matters. Making a decision, big or small affects us in a variety of ways. Acting on instincts takes into account all possibilities and we do what is best at the moment without question. Good or bad, the decision is coming from a strong force and clarity. There is no judgment involved.

Acting on feelings takes into account pass experiences. That alone, limits the possibilities. Having a negative or positive past experience presents us with the tendency is to repeat or learn from it and improve. Now there is nothing wrong with that but knowing the past impact may influence us not to want to go through it again even thought it was successful. The truth is there is such a thing as knowing too much.

For example, you may want to do public speaking to educate the world about your business for the purpose to expand it. You could have done your speech, it was exhilarating and very successful but the concerns now is that you remember the anxiety and pain it cause you preparing for it and are in front of a large audience. You know that can be successful again but the problem now is how you convince your brain that without pain you cannot gain.

With the same example, this time you are asked to attend an interview and answer questions in front a large audience. This time, you may still be anxious but your feelings through in the interview will be distinctly difference. Although you will prepare for the answer, you reaction will be instinctive and genuine.

The difference between the two is that with instinct, you are place into a situation where you have to act from your gut knowing that you have everything to succeed. Feelings in the hand, you use your past experience to guide and mold you to improve. Both will get you to the desired result but being instinctive is more direct and more opened to opportunities.

Personally, I prefer to act on instinct. It is coming from a grander scale. I have found that it serves me with more opportunities and have never felt stuck. It is coming from absolute power and self confidence. The other thing to look at or measure is that the strength you feel afterwards, a feeling that can never be surpassed by acting strictly from feelings or knowledge.