What Can Small Business Learn From Larger Progressive Businesses?

If you run a small business and are interesting in developing your business please read on.

Five years ago the private health care charity Nuffield expanded its business to providing customer-focused preventative health care, buying Canons gyms and transforming these into client- focused holistic health and well-being venues.

Nuffield decided that the challenge was to move away from the minimum customer contact which many gyms operate on to a paradigm of maximum contact.

As part of this, the organisation introduced a member 'MOT' which included measuring people up against a number of health measures as well as asking them questions about sleep and alcohol intake as a baseline from which to build upon their fitness.

The MOT is repeated every 3 months so customers can see any improvements which ties in with their idea that maintaining a customer's health and fitness is about being proactive and preventative in terms of ill-health.

The Nuffield approach also recognised that health and well-being is an ongoing journey in life rather than having a start and end point.

As a result, Nuffield train their staff to be good 'generalists' who know all of their services while at the same time developing a specialism, such as diabetes and fitness or understanding back pain.

Leadership in Nuffield is also about delegated authority so that senior managers do not have too much of their time taken up by making small- and medium-sized decisions.

All Nuffield staff are involved in one of the organisations's strategic projects which creates a shared approach to driving the business forwards.

Nuffield uses an Appreciative Inquiry(AI) approach to facilitating change by focusing on what works rather than on what does not work - solution rather than problem focused.

Taking the changes Nuffield has made as an example, my advice in terms of learning from them about how to develop your business would be to:

• Explore ways that you can get closer to your customer thinking
• If you are not doing so already - ask your customers what you can do to improve the services you provide to them
• Think about staff training and developing individuals understanding of all of the services you provide so they can tell your customers about them
• Think about developing staff expertise so each has a specialism since customers want specialists and staff like developing their expertise
• Think about delegating your various tiers of decision-making to the appropriate levels
• Think about involving each staff member in strategic projects - people close to the shop floor know how to make things work
• Consider using an AI approach by seeking out what is good and amplifying it

If you have found this blog to be useful please leave a comment or if you would like us to help you develop your business through business coaching please get in touch via our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.

What Can Small Businesses Learn From John Lewis?

Are you eager to increase your sales and keep your business alive during these challenging economic times?

I ran a workshop recently with a group of senior managers to think about a new way of doing business.

The group wanted me to help them think about the characteristics of a high-performing team and the starting point for them was their values.

John Lewis came up as a good example of an organisation with strong values that drive the success of the business.


John Lewis’s values include treating staff as ‘Partners’ with co-ownership, ‘Sustainability’ in a changing market and maintaining and building ‘Long-term customer relationships’.


You may or may not be in a position to create co-ownership in your business but one way of introducing this idea is perhaps creating a bonus scheme for your staff.

Essentially, the John Lewis ethos is: ‘Looked after staff creates looked after customers and the profit takes care of itself’.

You can bring these values to your small business by introducing any of the following 6 ideas which are drawn from the John Lewis business approach:

1. Empower team members to seek and provide back to the team feedback on what the customer wants and improve your service in line with those ‘customer priorities’
2. Talk to team members regularly about being exceptional and noticing areas where services could and should improve to serve the customer better
3. Openly share your vision, objectives and expectations with all your team members
4. Train your team members in how to effectively deal with customer complaints with an emphasis on ‘the customer is always right’ ethos
5. Empower team members to make their own decisions
6. Ensure your team members ‘know their stuff’, the services you provide inside out and that they 'bend over backwards' for customers

If you find any of these ideas useful please leave a comment on this blog or to find out about more about business coaching contact us through our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.

Small Business Coaching - Managing People Tools

Do you have a small business and see that managing people is important to your profitability?

This is the first of a number of blogs which - actioned by you - will help you to increase your productivity, morale and profitability.

The first tool - I want to share with you is objective setting.

Be clear on your business plan then determine what objectives to set each of your employees which will help you to achieve your business plan - few businesses do this really well.

Make sure you avoid duplication of effort when you develop individual objectives for and with your team members.

Also, any training and development should only happen if it helps the individual or your team to achieve their objectives.

Individual objectives are important to ensure that individuals are accountable.

Clear alignment of team and individual objectives with your business plan will help to motivate staff and increase their productivity because they will see how they are adding value to the business.

All these objectives must be SMART - by that I mean:

• Specifically - What do you want them to do?
• Measurable - What will be the evidence of success? Aim to make this clear i.e. quantitative or qualitative and both if possible.
• Achievable - Do they have the resources - for example, skills, materials etc., to achieve it?
• Realistic - Is it challenging yet realistic - including the timescales involves?
• Time bound - When are they to complete it by?

Aim to review your staff objectives with individuals every 3 months and set new ones where appropriate.

Check how individuals are getting on a at least every month by asking the following questions:

• What is going well? 
• What is not going well? 
• What support can you give them?

You set the 'what' they are to achieve. Allow them to set the 'how' they are to achieve it.

With inexperienced staff you may need to help them with the 'how'.

People are naturally goal and objective driven and setting them objectives that contribute to the achievement of the company business plan will motivate your people.

Future blogs will provide advice on other people management areas including:

• How to nip poor performance in the bud early on when you spot a problem
• How to address non-attendance
• How to massively improve the way you communicate with your staff and develop them into the bargain

If you have found this blog to be useful please do leave me a comment or visit our website West of England Coaching and Counselling.

Small Business Coaching - Back-to-Basics Business Development

Does the idea of business development fill you with dread? Something you would prefer to leave well alone whilst you focus on what you do well?

If you answered "Yes" to this question - you are not alone.

And yet, business development (BD) can make a business while a lack of it - or the wrong type - is often a key reason for business failure. So...we have to do it.

With this in mind, I think our aim must be to enjoy BD and we can do this by focusing on getting the key tools and techniques right.

The aim of BD and marketing is to get maximum return - or paying customers - for minimum expenditure.

Therefore, it pays to first consider the free BD you can do before actually spending a penny.

The first thing to do is make a list of everyone you know and tell them about your business.

If appropriate, you may consider giving them a sample / complimentary service with the proviso that they tell say five other people about you.

It also helps your family, friends, work contacts if you let them know what your ideal customer / client looks like and the key problems you fix or services you offer.

Telling your network is the simplest and easiest form of marketing and it's free.

Other free sources of marketing for small businesses include a card in your Post Office, offering to do a talk about your business to local groups and developing (and then printing at low cost) your own flyers to distribute to your target market.

If you're targeting a particular market and calling prospects would be helpful then you will need a cold-calling script. For some great tips visit businessballs.com.

If you do go down the cold-calling route expect to have to approach prospects about 8 times before getting a "Yes" to your proposition.

Someone once told me that customers need to see us in at least 3 places to buy our services - so bear that in mind when you are planning your BD and marketing strategy.

If you want to try an advert in a local paper, start with something small and see the advice on my previous post called Small Business Coaching: Back-to-Basics Marketing relating to this.

When you do start advertising in your local paper do negotiate. For example, ask for 12 months advertising with 2 free months and then get this in writing.

Why not ask for an advertorial so you get to tell readers about your business. For example, outline successful examples of your business in action or come up with a case study as both work well in this type of marketing.

Is it necessary at this stage for you to have a website?

Many successful small businesses have no brochure or website and are just as successful by simply using business cards and word of mouth.

If you do want a website make sure it fits in with the type of business you are offering and then shop around for good website designers who are competent at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as this will help to ensure you site is visible on the first page of search results.

Business Development (BD) can be enjoyable and reap rewards if you focus on getting the basics right.

If you have found this blog to be useful please let me know or get in touch via our website West of England Coaching and Counselling.