Viper Strategic

Reducing Friction in Your Business

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

I have yet to see a gravestone which said, “I should have spent more time at work” and I have yet to see a report of a company bankruptcy or any sort of disaster which reads, “Our problem was we had too much perspective”, says Tony McKenna.

"Although this is a humorous analysis, I think there is a lot of truth behind the joke. We can all find ourselves having to put more effort into our achievements than necessary and often if we had more perspective we could see ways to do things more effectively".

"Very often, a good way to bring some perspective into a business is to use an outside company for something – even if you think you could do it in house. This can be for a specific requirement such as marketing or to help you look at the whole approach to business with the aim of being more effective".

"I am careful to say more effective rather than more profitable because very often a business owner’s requirements are a lot more complex than just profit or growth and part of helping people to get perspective is to begin by having a look at what the overall requirements are. I think of whatever is holding the company back as “friction” and our job is to remove it".

"By following this approach we have helped companies to achieve a wide variety of things with far less effort than they thought possible. For example in a matter of months, we helped a transport company to get on a preferred supplier list which they had been trying to do for ten years, this then opened up all the possibilities they could hope for to create the business which they wanted. Sometimes the requirement is to get the whole team pulling in the same direction, sometimes to prepare for the business owner to take a step back and sometimes it is simply to improve profitability so that the company can use more external services and get on the virtuous circle of increased perspective".

"We are currently working with a business which is equally owned by two dynamic business partners who were held back by the friction which they each inadvertently brought to the business. Once this was removed the whole business has leapt forwards and has nearly doubled employee numbers in less than a year".

"We were able to secure grant funding which helped all of the companies mentioned in this article make a leap forwards. These grants will be removed by October 2010 but there is still time for us to arrange one for businesses which qualify – ideally we would like to begin the process with a short meeting in July". 

"So we are looking for business owners who suspect that there may be an easier, lower friction way of achieving what they want and are intrigued to find out what that might be".

This offer from our Business Affiliate Tony McKenna from McKenna Smith Wessex dovetails beautifully with Viper's approach to helping businesses both understand more about how to effectively market and communicate themselves and then put those ideas into action. In many ways it's a chicken and egg situation and matters not which comes first...

Just two things to do though:

1. work with us to identify where you feel your friction and

2. then let us help you to develop strategy and plans to improve, develop and grow your business.

- Posted on Friday 25 Jun 2010 at 17:40 by Neil Wilkins

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