Formula 1 Business Grand Prix

This weekend saw the start of the F1 motor racing season and, with the return of Michael Schumacher, will we once again hear Martin Brundle saying ‘Schumi’s just having another day at the office’ after winning seven world championships?

Today, will you be having another day at the office or will you be driving your business forward and accelerating past your competitors?

Schumacher’s championships were strategically planned by working on each aspect of the car and driver performance.

As a business owner, do you have a strategic plan to identify and work on your key success drivers: -
• Pricing for maximum profit.
• Winning more customers.
• Converting your sales leads into sales.
• Getting customers to stay longer.
• Getting customers to spend more each time.
• Getting customers to spend more often.

To get onto the starting grid, today you need to have the IT systems in place to generate the information on how your key success drivers are performing.

Then you need to record these key performance indicators so that you can work on improving each specific area of your business.

The best tool to achieve is the OnePage Plan ™ which pulls together the critical measures of your business literally on a single sheet of paper.

But that is not the end of the story because this only tells you how your business is performing now. It doesn’t tell you how to improve that performance.

You actually have to do something positive, i.e. take action. And the way to do it is to look at the actual performance of each of your key success drivers and set targets for future performance, but do it once a month, each month, every month.

Norman Snodgrass, senior director, Mayes Business Partnership.