Australia's online magazine for entrepreneurs & SMEs

Be asset tidy

Thursday, 28 August 2008

By Kirsty Dunphey

You may have more assets at your disposal than you thought. But equally some may be more a dead weight than helpful.

What’s not an asset in your business?

1. Your systems (if they’re only in your head).
2. Your written systems (if they’re rigid, inflexible, un-personalised and can’t be changed with influence from your team and customers).
3. Your number one customer (if your business is too dependant upon having their custom).
4. The customer you’re dealing with right now (if you don’t have a service plan in place to nurture the relationship into the future).
5. Your best salesperson/employee (if they believe that they’re indispensable, worst still if you believe they are).
6. Your longest standing employee (if they can’t embrace change).

What could be a hidden asset?

1. Your customer complaints (they should scream to you; fix or implement a system here).
2. Your outgoing emails (many could serve as a blog post, an answer to a frequently answered question and a reason never to have to type that same email answering that same question ever again).
3. Your current customer when you only have a few. One delighted customer (if you do it right) can talk about you 10 times more than 10 moderately satisfied ones.
4. Your suppliers (if there’s a hidden customer hiding there).
5. That plucky (translation; sometimes annoying) employee who just won’t shut up with all their great ideas (find a way to channel their creativity so that you don’t get frustrated, and so that you can farm any brilliance that may occur).
6. That employee you know has dreams and desires of leaving you and starting their own company (figure out a way to encourage, challenge and inspire them, utilising the best they have to offer while they’re with you – who knows you might also end up with a dedication in their book once they’ve gone on to further greatness).

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of www.reallysold.com - a tool to help real estate agents create advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: www.kirstydunphey.com

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