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Leadership Unlimited, August 2010
Five Strategies to Improve Company Profitability

Interested in improving your organization’s profitability? Let
me share five strategies guaranteed to help.

Jersey Business Leaders is a group of 15 business owners
committed to promoting economic development by providing quality
products and services to new or growing businesses. I joined
JBL last year, and earlier this summer the members elected me
President.

As president, I’ll provide guidance on moving the organization
forward. Some of those ideas and strategies apply to JBL as an
organization, but also to the wide range of companies run by
these business owners. So, these ideas might help you as well.

To visit the JBL website, click here:
www.jerseybusinessleaders.com

The first strategy: Focus on your purpose—define it, then live
it. You, as the leader of the organization, must know the
organization’s purpose. Then ensure that everyone else
understands it so that you, and others in the organization, use
the purpose to guide important decisions.

If you already have a purpose statement, you need to decide if
it’s up-to-date, and really reflects your organization today.
If you don’t have a purpose statement, develop one. It isn’t
about what you do, but why you exist, and how your organization
makes the world a better place.

A second strategy is having the right processes in place.
Processes include everything from workflow, to finding
customers, to running meetings—all the “things” you do to run
your organization.

Evaluate your current processes to determine which are working,
and which aren’t. For working processes, look for ways to
improve them. For the others, decide if they require
modifications, or if they’re so antiquated that you should
eliminate them altogether.

Getting the data that is the lifeblood or your company is the
third strategy. What are your productivity measures? How, and
in what proportion, do different parts of your organization
contribute to your bottom line?

You also need hard numbers about your customers. Where is your
business coming from? How many customers do you have? Who are
the most profitable for you? What do those customers have in
common?

The fourth strategy is to focus on marketing, and rigorously
apply strategies 2 (processes) and 3 (data) to those marketing
efforts. Here you need to look at everything from how you find
prospects to what your marketing copy says.

What methods are you using to get the word out about what you
do? How can you improve using the various forms of media,
including social media? Tracking your marketing efforts is
especially important. This will tell you what works, and what
doesn’t.

Finally, establish SMART goals (Specific, Measurable,
Attainable, Realistic, and Time frame oriented), and hold
yourself, your direct reports, and your organizations
accountable for achieving them.

I’m honored to be President of Jersey Business Leaders, and know
that these strategies will work for JBL as an organization, for
its 15 member companies, and for you. You have the strategies.
Start implementing them.

To visit the JBL website, click here:
www.jerseybusinessleaders.com

Until next edition, keep leading the way!

Copyright (C) 2010 by Terry Wall

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