Business Development Advice

The Accelerated Business Growth System is the compilation of the best business development ideas from Peter Thomson, the UK’s leading business growth expert.

The Accelerated Business Growth System is a 36 module multi-media business development system which also includes personal development.

This combination of business and personal development makes a great deal of sense but it is often missed from business programs. 

To change and improve your business often means that you as the business owner also have to change. How you set goals and plan for the future, how you manage your time, how you influence people to accept your ideas.

I am planning to feature the Accelerated Business Growth System regularly on this blog as I feature particular modules and blog around the business development program.

For more details see Accelerated Business Growth System

My blog has drifted too far into Internet marketing, partly because that is where a lot of the recent launches have been so it is nice to come back to an excellent, very comprehensive business growth system for real businesses with real products and services.

Peter Thomson has written a great report 7 Common Business Mistakes which you can download for free.

The Accelerated Business Growth System Is Also Available As The Probiz Edge

Peter Thomson has licensed the Accelerated Business Growth System to the PROBIZ Network of accountants in the UK to deliver business growth coaching.

If you would prefer to be trained/coached rather than work through the modules on your own, I recommend that you Google PROBIZ Edge and your local area to see if there is a PROBIZ member who provides business growth coaching based on Peter Thomson’s business development ideas.

It is my understanding that not all PROBIZ members will provide the PROBIZ Edge as for some the material is a stretch from their usual accountancy/tax work. However many PROBIZ members have great commercial reputations and extensive experience in the world of general business development and the PROBIZ Edge is a natural product extension.

That’s quite a challenge set by the title but with the help of BusinessSummaries, the business book summary service, that’s exactly what you can make happen.

As a business coach who talks to many owners of small businesses, I know that there is an element of scepticism about business advice and the concerns comes from two main areas:

1. I am very busy - I don’t have the time to learn.
    
2. Business advice is very expensive

Notice that rarely do people say variations of ”I know it all. I don’t need to learn.” Instead it’s a combination of concerns about time and money.

I used to say that it will only cost you £10 to £15 to read a great book that could inspire you and change your views on your business forever (eg Michael Gerber The E Myth Revisited or Jay Abraham Getting Everything You Can) but I always knew that time was an issue.

It takes time to read a full book and even longer to move into putting changes into place in your business.

Business Book Summaries - The Solution

There are a number of companies that summarise business books and my current favourite is BusinessSummaries.

This is a very flexible service for anyone who wants to learn how to build a bigger, better business but doesn’t want to spend very much and doesn’t have much time.

How To Improve Your Business In 4 Hours Per Month

The idea is simple.

You read one summary report each month in a particular area and then you put what you learnt into action. That way you improve your business, slowly and systematically.

OK there is more to it than that but I will tell you the entire process below.

Introducing The Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity

Talk to any business adviser and we each have our own formula for success.

Mine is based on the Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity so let me explain:

1. Your key performance numbers - your starting point is to know where your business is. How you are performing across all your business activities.
    
2. Your vision, goals, priorities and time management - where are you going and how does that translate into actionable priorities and activities.
    
3. Your market positioning - how you find the best market segments and niches and put yourself in position to beat your competitors and win.
    
4. How you generate leads - what methods you use to gain the attention of new prospective customers and how you make these methods for effective.
    
5. How you convert leads into orders - leads are very nice but they don’t pay the bills so this pillar explains how you persuade someone who has expressed an interest and turn them into a new customer.
    
6. How you turn one time customers into frequent buyers- it is vital for your profitability and growth that satisfied customers come back and buy again and again.
    
7. How you lead your team - as your business grows, you have to learn to achieve more through other people so you have to set the direction, inspire your team and manage performance through your employees.
    
8. How you systematise your business - your aim should always be to build a business that works well without you based on great staff and effective, well designed and documented systems that deliver great customer service consistently.

This list of eight pillars represent everything that you need to develop your business but ignore all the compliance issues that you have to do - the accounting and tax rules, the employment legislation, the Health & Safety laws…

If you become a regular reader of my blog and I hope you do, you will become very familiar with the Eight Pillars as they are the basis for everything I talk about.

The System For Improving Your Business Quickly And Cheaply

1. Take a good look at the Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity model and then assess your performance against each of the pillars. Award yourself 10 if your business is perfect in this area, 5 if your business is OK and less if your business has a lot of work to do in this area.
    
2. Decide what are the biggest priorities (or stop reading if you’ve got a total score of 72 with no area with a score of less than an eight - at that level you are not going to find magic answers to move you from great to superb.)
    
3. Sign up to the BusinessSummaries service.
     
4. Based on your top priority, choose your first book summary and download the PDF and the audio file. You will see that you have hundreds to choose from. I find that learning is best with an audio and visual experience where you can do one, the other or both.
    
5. Read or listen the summary once to gain an overall understanding of what the book is about. This will take about 20 to 30 minutes.
    
6. Repeat only this time start taking notes or highlight areas that are particularly relevant to you.
    
7. Based on what you have just learnt, spend 30 minutes brainstorming ideas on how you can use this new knowledge in your business. Don’t judge, just record your ideas and work around the themes. A simple mindmap with main  and smaller branches can be a useful way to record your thoughts. I recommend that you create your own journal or file to use rather than sheets of paper. That way you capture the ideas permanently.
    
8. Review your list and decide which ideas you are going to out into action. I would prefer that you implement two effectively than ten ineffectively.
    
9. For those ideas that you have chosen, it is now time to do a little planning. Set your goals/targets and identify the action steps you need to implement the ideas.
    
10. Put the ideas into action over the next month. Be consistent and focused.
     
11. Record your performance towards your target and congratulate yourself if you are making good progress.
     
12. Reassess your ratings against the Eight Pillars Model. Choose your highest priority target and repeat the process.

So there you have it.

A business development process based around the BusinessSummaries book service.

It takes you through your business systematically based on your assessment of the highest priorities and is a gentle introduction to learning about development and most importantly, taking that learning and turning it into action.

I believe that you will achieve more with the other more expensive business development programs that I bring you but this is a great way to start.

Your success depends on which books you select (and that depends on which particular issues you are trying to solve), how well you implement them and how well you cover the joins.

The other business development solutions are more focused on particular issues, may take you through a step by step process and join from the start to the end. 

Welcome to my new Business Development Advice Blog.

This marks the start of my journey under the Nitro Blueprint System for launching and developing Internet marketing websites.

My name is Paul Simister although I co-brand myself as “Your Profit Coach.”

You may have already encountered my main blog - Business Coaching Blog devoted to helping owners of small businesses build bigger, better businesses with more profit.

While that blog includes my own thoughts about business development as well as updated news and thoughts on my eight business development superstars, this blog is intended to be a review site for third party business development programs.

There is so much business advice out in the market and the Internet has made it easy to find more and more from all over the world.

The problem is sorting the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff.

And that’s where I come in.

My Role and Purpose 

I try the programs and report back on what I like and what I don’t like.

It’s my task to find the great business development programs that are worthy of your money and where you can reap benefits that are many multiples of the price you pay.

But it’s also my role to find the popular programs that are over-hyped scams where the only people likely to get rich will be those selling the program.

I hope to find more good than bad because I invest my own money in buying these programs and then invest my time in using them, assessing them and writing my reviews.

Your Chance To Tap Into My Experience & Knowledge 

To make sure that I weed out the bad early, I rely on my own business experience that now stretches back over 25 years including owning my own consultancy/coaching business since 1995 and my qualifications which include:

1. Chartered Accountant - Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales - you can take the man out of accounting but you can’t take the accountant out of the man. My focus is always on profit, cash and measurable results.
    
2. Master of Business Administration - I earned my MBA back in 2003 when I was mature 43 years old with many years of business experience under my belt and it was awarded “with Distinction” by the Manchester Business Schools (one of the best in Europe).
    
3. Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach - I may be a qualified accountant but marketing and strategy are where my passions lie and have done for more than 20 years.

If I am reviewing it, you can be sure that the sales letter and/or free information was very impressive but we know that doesn’t mean it will be good in practice.

How The Business Development Advice Blog Will Make Money 

I make no bones about it.

I earn from promoting the great business development programs through affiliate links but I see business development as a series of stepping stones.

If you are ambitious, no one program will give you all the answers and take your business to the peak of  its potential.

It just doesn’t work like that.

No business development system is the ultimate, “do this and you’ll never have to do anything ever again” system. To find out why, see the Best Selling System or the Best Selling System For You on my other blog. Basically everybody would buy it, do the same thing and the system would stop working.

My aim is to build up your trust in me and my blog.

When you have got everything you can out of one business development program (but not before - please don’t try to do what I do and combine programs because it can get very confusing) I hope that you come back and find another program which I recommend.

Your Chance To Be Heard

I welcome comments and debate on my blog.

If I have tried a program, like it and recommend it but you have tried it and it hasn’t worked then please make a suitable comment. I will not tolerate bad language.

I do have a concern about people who just buy business development programs and books and never do anything about them and I have blogged about this subject on my Business Coaching Blog.

Are You A Business Advice Junkie?

Cold Turkey For The Business Advice Junkie

So of you have bought a program and haven’t yet done anything with it, then please explain why you haven’t taken action.