How to win by working with the enemy

You too can increase profits without necessarily increasing sales!

How?

The “Profits Leak Detective Newsletter” offers regular tips and strategies to help you identify and plug those leaking profits.

You may never have known you have them.

Subscribe to receive a FREE Case Study on the success of just one strategy.

BONUS free report “7 Clues to a Profit Leak”, valued at $47.

How do you know that you should be looking for leaks?

Are there some clues or symptoms that are telltales saying that a

bit of drilling down into your business might pay some dividends?

Possible leaks could be anywhere.

This report provides 7 clues that should put you on alert for a profit leak.

Be alert - SUBSCRIBE NOW

"Adam, over the past six years, I've had the pleasure of 'bumping into you' on at least three business and marketing related forums. Your contributionsto discussions have always been courteous, astute, incisive and practical,delivered with good humour, and based upon 'real-world' business experience. You are clearly an experienced business professional who actually knows what he is talking about. I wonder if your clients know what a gem they have in you? As one business professional to another, I salute you.

Good Wishes,
John Williamson - The Wealth Coach
www.thewealthcoach.com
www.retaildisplaysecrets.com

+++++++++++++++++++

I just LOVED "7 Clues to a Profits Leak".

Steven Walker - Profit Improvement Advisors
Calgary, Canada

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You will be proud how your protégés are proceeding! We have expanded the business to Katherine and Alice (Tennant is also on the list). T he catering side of the business is far less stressful and is actually profitable, now that we only take the good jobs.
We will never forget the assistance you gave us in re-inventing our business!

Karen Sheldon

Managing Director

Karen Sheldon Catering

Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++

The chap is Adam Gordon whom I have known for many years. He is a former resident of Darwin having lived here for perhaps 25 years, is an excellent communicator and has a very good appreciation of small business, business plans and all that goes with it. In fact Adam is regarded as a business guru.

Charles Wright, QS Services, Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++++

Thanks for the catch-up the other day. It's great to be working with a legend in the small business community.

AJ Kulatunga, BLKMGK ICT

Darwin, Australia

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The 7 Clues is a great.

What I like the most in the Seven Clues report is that it clearly explains that accounting is merely a subset of proper financial management and

that only the business owner can practise financial management. The accountant does the accounting, and in doing so supports the business owner's financial management. And the business owner uses the accountant's information, but relying on the accountant to do full-blown financial management is short-sighted.

The report nicely "grounds" an otherwise complex topic which many business owners are afraid of touching, so they often move ahead in blissful ignorance. The water hose and the soggy soil under the leak makes an excellent and easy-to-comprehend example, upon which the financial management concept is nicely built.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur Dynamic Innovations Squad
Personal and Firm-Wide Performance Improvement for Management Consulting Firms

Vancouver, BC Canada

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You have played a very important role in my development in business.

You were there with the right information at the right time, I thank you for that.
By adding the next level of systems, and marketing knowledge that you brought to the table we able to identify our objectives, acknowledge the gaps in our business and put in place the planning so as to achieve those objectives. Within 5 years we achieved 9 of our ten stated objectives. In that same year we won the NT Telstra Small business of the year"

Greg Haigh
Director - Trade Group
Regional And Northern maintenance services
RANms

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Recent newsletters include:

How well do you know your market?
How turning away customers leads to profits
How to create Superior Value
How to win against your competition
Do you need to make changes to your business?
"Our customers are costing us too much!"
Why competition is good news
What makes a web site effective?
Most businesses have one, but...
How to improve your quotations
How to raise prices without losing sales
Is your business resilient?
How to develop a new product in your niche
How big is your profit gap?
How discounting destroyed value
Benchmarking for best practice
From all customers to some customers
How to take the guesswork out of growth
Should your USP be based on logic or emotion?
How to triple your quotation success rate
How to dramatically improve your quotations
How to make more effective decisions?
How to develop your USP
Do you want to make better planning choices?
Are youmaking these mistakes in planning?
How to use SWOT properly
Does your sales conversation balance the scales of justice?
The perils of profitless cash flow!
So what is more important, cash flow or profit?
Are you getting value from your pricing?
Do you report to yourself monthly?
Follow the money trail!
Performance also counts!
Get more bang for your buck!
Without measurement there can be no improvement!
Where would your business be without customers?
Using your monthly report to improve your profits
Just who is your customer?
And what do you know about your customer?
How branding can increase your profits!
Can branding make you more money?
How to balance the value equation
Tilting the balance in your favour
How to pin the tail on the donkey
Are you groping in the dark with your real cost of labour
Mastering core marketing principles
Building a 5P marketing plan
Profit leaking processes
Should you be trying to increase or decrease cash flow
At times it is folly to hasten
5 steps to create your future
What will be the X-Factor in 2009
Lies, damn lies & statistics
How to use a squad profit leak detectives
Confidence leads to action
Increase sales - so easy to say
So you want to know how to increase sales
Is selling a necessary evil?

How to win by working with the enemy

Why your competition can be your best friend

Are you like most small businesses? Do you see your competition as the enemy, the biggest threat to your business? Someone to be resisted and held at bay at all times.

Have you ever been limited in taking advantage of an opportunity because you didn't have sufficient capacity to meet the requirements called for? You may have all the required skills but can't meet the volumes required.

Or maybe an opportunity may call for a range of skills, products, or services beyond the capability of your business. You may be able to meet some of the requirement, but not all.

In both these situations you can be faced with a dilemma: do you forgo the opportunity or do you find some means of adding to your capacity or capabilities. Partnering or collaborating with other businesses, either formally or informally is one solution.

The dilemma arises because the businesses most likely to have the required capacity or additional capability may well be your competitors. And most small businesses are extremely distrustful of their competitors.

Partnering is taking advantage of an opportunity presently out of reach of individual businesses operating in their own right. Advantages include:

Learning from each other and sharing the knowledge
Developing closer working relationships with suppliers
Undertaking joint research, marketing and development
Improving opportunities to meet customer demand for products/services
Strengthening negotiating and purchasing
Access to new expertise & experience

We call partnering or collaborating with your competition - co-opetition.

So what is the basis of co-opetition?

Co-opetition can be developed in a number of ways. They can be in the form of:

a formal joint venture for a particular project or opportunity;
an on-going formal relationship looking for a variety of opportunities, where a new business is formed to provide the vehicle for the co-operation;
an on-going formal relationship looking for a variety of opportunities, where one business agrees to be the lead vehicle for the co-operation;
an on-going informal relationship looking for a variety of opportunities.

Where three or more businesses become involved the partnership can be regarded as a business network.

Successful co-opetition has five characteristics which must be met:

Each business needs to stand to benefit, and so to have the motivation to join the partnership or network;
Members of the partnership need to have a good relationship with each other and develop commitment to each other and the business project;
Each firm needs to have something to offer;
There needs to be 'domain overlap' between the firms.
The business climate needs to be right

And how to avoid the problems?
Co-opetition depends on frankness and trust. This can take a long time to build, and a very short term to destroy. Trust is destroyed when:

Partnership members moving into competition with one another when there is a partnership opportunity;
Deviation from the core business of the partnership;
Lack of a self-starting, motivated, seller
Business opportunities are not shared by partnership members
Lack of commitment to a group effort
One business behaves entrepreneurially at the expense of the others.

So to succeed partners need to do the reverse of this.

Committed co-opetition with your competitors can reap rich returns. Give it a try.

What do you think? You can comment by clicking on the button below.

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