Jon Dale is a business coach with Small Fish Business Coaching.  He has 15 years experience in IT and Telecommunications where he has been involved in account management, sales and managing sales teams.

Jon’s coaching philosophy includes making sure business operators are focused on what needs to be done and are not neglecting the tasks outside of their comfort zone.

Q. Is there a particular type of business that you specialize in helping or have a particular insight into ?

A. Small Fish specialises in coaching small businesses – that is from slightly larger than tiny, micro, one-person businesses up to $10-20m revenue. They are small, ambitious for change or growth, have a small management team (or a single leader) and often face a challenge – don’t know how to grow, see a growth opportunity but not sure how to get it, stuck in a rut or not making enough money.

Personally, because of my previous career background, I have an affinity for businesses selling services to other businesses – not necessarily technology. However, I think this is just me attracting people who have similar experience to me. Other coaches in our company have had similar experiences – finding it easier to attract clients with whom they share some common background or experience.

Q. What are the two most common mistakes you see struggling business operators make ?

A.  1 - Not doing enough to attract new customers – in other words not doing enough marketing. Many small businesses rely on a single or a couple of marketing activities and kind of wait for them to come or leave themselves at the mercy of their “market”. In our opinion (with some justification), that is not enough.

You need 12-15 different marketing or prospecting activities running at any one time (thank you Tony Gattari – great speaker, by the way. www.achieversgroup.com.au).

2 – Not paying attention to their responsibility to manage and lead their team (if they have one). Many small business owners neglect this and many are frustrated by “staff issues”. It’s a very common problem and one easily remedied by improvements in the way people lead and inspire, communicate, manage and hold accountable. Most staff do actually care as do most business owners and all it takes to make things work much better is to grease the wheels, so to speak, with a little leadership.

Q.  Can you describe an experience in which a struggling business was able to turn around by making specific changes to their business practices ?

An accountancy practice I have coached for a long time was struggling – not enough cash was coming in consistently enough for the owners (a husband and wife) to live comfortably and stress-free. They were being taken advantage of by clients who took a long time to pay bills and, consequently, had 180 days worth of aged debt. They were undercharging and being significantly less expensive than an equivalent service from other accountancy firms, they had staff issues and they were doing nothing to attract new customers.

We worked on all these issues and more, increasing their prices, getting tough with debtors and enforcing collections, turning the fearful accountant into a marketing monster (honestly) and working hard to engage the small team of accountants and admin staff. It wasn’t immediate and it was hard work but, over a period, revenue and profit have improved, cash flow is hugely better and the principal and his wife are planning a holiday (playing golf on the longest golf course in the world – across the Nullarbor, for some reason J)

Although every business is different and often just a little bit peculiar, they often share characteristics and opportunities. The ones above occur over and over again.

Q. Do you think gathering information about how customers heard about a business and how efficiently enquiries are being converted into sales is important ?