Profits | The Barefoot Spirit

Are You Ready to Be Your Own CEO? – 7 Steps You’ve Got to Take

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:00:15 +0000

With the accelerating rate of disruption out there these days, it makes you wonder if all of us will be self-employed one day. Access to technology is already empowering many of us to “hang up the shingle” and go into business for ourselves. With the explosion of new service providers, you can outsource almost every business function, and you can quickly become your own CEO.

Even though your new company may be spartan with just a few employees if any, you will still be responsible to your customers to get the job done and on time, no matter how much is outsourced. The majority of your team may work for other companies and probably will.

But how will you orchestrate all these in-house and outsourced people? How will you hold these folks accountable? How will you know when to hire and how to compensate? What form will your planning take? What will your contracts look like? How about your communications? What about cashflow, personnel, and distribution management? What about decision making? And what about leadership?

Is there an easy way to learn and apply the best practices successful CEO’s have been following for decades? And what about the most recent breakthroughs that can help you succeed? How would you like a neat little playbook that outlines and summarizes 70 of the best classic and modern CEO tools, all proven to be successful?

Our friend and associate Jim Canfield has just published such a CEO “user’s manual.” We think it should be on the desk of every CEO and every self-employed entrepreneur. It’s called CEO Tools 2.O: A System to Think, Manage, and Lead Like a CEO. Jim’s new book updates and pays homage to the famous original work, CEO Tools: The Nuts-n-Bolts of Business for Every Manager’s Success by Kraig Kramers published back in 2002.

CEO Tools 2.0 is a must have for any CEO, president, business owner, or senior executive who wants to execute easier and have more time – while increasing growth and profits. Sound like you?

Jim has a patent ability to distill complex ideas, policies and procedures into easy to understand principles and processes. Then he backs them up with tons of examples to help you get the message. His book is organized according to the seven steps of “The CEO Tools Business System”:

Set the Direction. Clarify your overall goals, vision, and action plans with a One-Page Business Plan and use it to better communicate your goals to everyone you depend upon.
Communicate to Build Trust. Ask everyone you depend on how to solve the challenges you face. They will surprise you with their solutions.
Track Metrics and Give Feedback. Identify and track key performance indicators with the Quarterly Priorities Manager (QPM) and the Trailing 12-Month Chart (T12M).
Anticipate the Future and Create It. Ensure your company’s future with tools like What’s Next and the 7 Key plans every business should have in place.
Attract, Hire, and Coach Winners. Put winners in the top 5 customer impacting jobs and make sure they agree on what constitutes excellent performance. Then empower them.
Build an Autonomous Company. Be free of day-to-day involvement with leaders who focus on long-term strategic issues and confidently keep daily issues on track.
Celebrate Successes. Spread recognition and appreciation throughout the company with programs for all team members designed to appreciate the contributions of other team members

CEO Tools 2.0 builds out each step with tools you can use and real case studies showing where and how they have been used effectively. Whether you have a big staff or work with an outsourced team, it’s teamwork that will increase your growth and profits, ease your execution, and save you time. CEO Tools 2.0 is the playbook for winning teams!

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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The Trouble with Disruption

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 16:44:15 +0000

Today, the business tabloids will tell you how glorious it is to disrupt your industry.

Every week there’s a new story about another successful entrepreneur who has disrupted their industry and made a billion. But that’s not even half the story. The tabloids are quick to pander to your desire to see all things new and reward the game changers. It sells magazines!

The fact is that behind every one of those disrupting game-changers is a story of pushback from the buyers, tons of missionary work, and years of not being taken seriously.

And, why should they take you seriously?

Your ideas have never been tested in the marketplace. No one wants to be the first retailer to take a chance on an unproven idea. Besides, they have their tried and true products that have been regularly producing profits for them. Why should they risk losing their go-to brands, the ones they know, the ones that are already in demand?

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Give Your People Permission to be Brilliant

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 17:00:13 +0000

These days there are tons of companies that say they want their people to be more engaged, but are they giving them permission to do so? Yes: permission! It’s subtle, but powerful.

Permission is a powerful idea in determining company culture. Are you giving your people permission to be creative, make decisions, solve problems, and take responsibility? Or, in the name of efficiency, structure, or compliance, are you preventing the very type of support you need?

Here are some ways to give your people permission:

Compensation

Some part of employees’ compensation should be based on sales, growth, and profits. It will take some time to identify and agree upon metrics used to measure those key indicators, but get started now and tweak it every year until it’s right.

If you offer a bonus, make it quarterly. A year is too long for them to remember, and after a poor first half of the year, they may just give up. Quarterly is short enough to remember, and if they have a bad quarter, well, there’s a new opportunity next quarter.

Knowledge

Your staff can’t help you if you don’t tell them what you need. Many businesses believe in the “need-to-know” policy which keeps employees in the dark. We believe in the “know-the-need” policy which includes them in the company’s challenges, opportunities and triumphs.

They already have your corporate knowledge and a stake in solving your problems, especially if they share in your success. We suggest quarterly meetings with sales and sales support staff (i.e., everybody not in sales) to brainstorm solutions. They will surprise you with their great ideas!

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Base Compensation on Sales, Growth, and Profitability

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 17:00:21 +0000

Brian Tracy once said that most employee behavioral problems are caused by compensation systems. In short, you get what you pay for. Nowhere is this more critical than in how you compensate your sales team. For years we paid our salespeople a commission based on sales alone. Much later we realized that our compensation plan was incomplete. We had to find a way to also reward for growth and profits!

Growth is the key to survival for any new startup. But be careful. Your sales team will do exactly what you pay them to do! If you pay by the hour, then you are giving them the message that you pay for attendance. They will put in the time but not necessarily do the job you need them to do. The alternatives require some serious thought: If you pay a guaranteed flat rate plus commission, how big is the guarantee? What is the commission based on? And what are the levels and how are they set? Can these levels be achieved at any cost, because if they can, your sales team will spend as much as necessary to make sales, thereby reducing your overall profitability.

So you need a system that rewards for sales, growth and profitability.

This may sound simple, but it’s not. Your salespeople must be provided with last year’s sales figures. They have to be aware of the cost of sales. And they should understand the cost of goods of each of the products your company sells. Although they have no control over the cost of goods, they can increase profitability by offering discounts on products that have a lower cost of goods, rather than discount products that have a higher cost of goods.

We built our system over a period of years of trial and error. First, all sides had to agree on the term, what was being measured, when, and why. We started by providing a small base salary that would basically cover their bills.

Every territory was different and had to be treated differently when analyzing sales. In each, we used the sales for each month last year and the cost of those sales per case. That became our baseline to compare to this month’s sales figures. We then determined profitability per case in that territory.

But some argued it wasn’t fair because of special market dynamics that created one-time anomalies. So we calculated a 3-month average, using the previous month, the same month, plus the following month of the previous year. This became our new baseline for sales this month this year.

Now we needed a plan that would reward for growth, which was sales greater than the baseline. We paid commission on each case sold that exceeded last year’s 3-month baseline.

Then, if in any given month, sales exceeded the baseline by a pre-agreed upon amount, say 25%, the commission would double on all cases back to the baseline. And if sales exceeded the baseline by 50%, all cases over the baseline were worth 3 times as much in commissions.

So the same case could be worth one, two, or three times the commission if the salesperson hit the various plateaus. Our salespeople naturally would push for the next highest plateau every month!

We also kept a close eye on their cost of sales and would reward them for savings in this area, or penalize them for increased costs. This kept them mindful of the costs and use of marketing materials, sales trips, distributors’ incentives and other costs required to make sales. Our sales staff became very resourceful and frugal!

Finally we were paying for sales, growth and profitability. Within two years of implementing this plan, we became one of the fastest growing wine brands in the country. It was well worth the effort! Now, with the proper compensation plan in effect, you too can watch your sales, growth, and profitability soar!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Training Magazine – Teach Employees to think like Owners by Scaling Down to Two Divisions

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 19:10:48 +0000

As a leader, you’re hyper-focused on your company’s productivity, profits, and growth. Wouldn’t it be nice if your employees were as focused on those factors as you and the company’s other executives? Sure, they do what you tell them. They come in every day and perform every task within their job descriptions. But often that’s where the buck stops. If a problem lands in their laps that isn’t what they consider to be “their responsibility,” they pass it on to the next guy or they bring it to you expecting a solution.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can teach your employees to think and act outside of their job descriptions—to think, in point of fact, like owners! At Barefoot Cellars, we found that the key to turning worker bees into solutions-oriented entrepreneurs was simplifying our structure into just two divisions: sales and sales support.

To read the complete article, please visit Training Magazine

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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How to Use Your Suppliers as Investors to Reduce Your Need for Capital

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 17:00:13 +0000

Nobody likes to get bills. They seem unending and chew up your monthly income as fast as it comes in. It’s probably the scariest part of starting a new business. You begin to realize that the bills are due no matter whether you have the funds to pay them or not. Many businesses fold simply because they can’t pay their bills. Many that survive find they can’t expand without a big cash infusion that may cause them to lose control of their own company. Is there another way?

When you are new in business this is especially trying. You find yourself playing catchup almost immediately and it can take years before there’s anything left you could conceivably call “profits.” For us it took 10 years to really get ahead! Why? Because we were growing and everything we made went right back into growth. Sound familiar?

But we found something surprising about all those bills. We discovered that there were several vendors we had who depended on us for their own growth! They actually wanted us to make it so they could sell us more and send us even more bills!

Take another look at your vendors and suppliers. Who’s getting the most money out of you each month? If you succeed do they succeed? Shouldn’t you be strategic allies? How can you make them increase your credit and lengthen your terms so that you can better afford grow, and, in the process make them a lot of money? Answer: TRUST. That’s right, they have to trust you!

They have to believe that you will stick around when you get bigger and don’t need them anymore. They have to believe that you will pay your bills on time. They have to believe that you will notify them as far in advance as possible when you can’t – with a plan to bring your account current within 30 days. They also have to believe in you, your product, your management and your growth strategy.

What would make them believe in all this? How about quarterly meetings where you outline your progress, your challenges and your plans? How about long-term contracts? How about treating them like a real partner with updates and opportunities?

This isn’t going to happen overnight. It will require some seasoning, where, over time, your consistent behavior earns their trust! It took us years but eventually our supply companies, vendors and bankers all extended our credit and terms enabling us to reduce our need for capital and grow on our cash flow. Sure there were times when we were unable to perform, but because they believed we had their best interests at heart, they were lenient. They’d seen how we handled the same situation in the past. They judged us not by how well we paid when we were on time but by how fast we became current when we were late!

Maybe it’s time for a meeting with the vendors and suppliers who send you your largest bills. Find out what it would take to get them to extend your credit. Usually they will have a performance plan whereby you prove over time that you are worthy of more credit. Go ahead and prove it! It’s a whole lot cheaper than a loan, you stay in control of your company, you reduce the use of your interest-bearing line of credit, and you forge a long-term alliance with a supplier who has a special interest in your success. Yes, it’s sort of like what the pioneer said, “Thar’s gold in them thar bills!”

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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World’s Best Sale Pitch: “My Product will help you Increase Sales”

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 21:50:23 +0000

We’ve spent over two decades in sales, and it’s true – nothing happens until the sale is made. We have a friend who described her sales job as “conveying the value proposition of (her) product to (her) buyers.”

There are many books written on the subject of sales, sale techniques, and best closing strategies. We’ve often said the best sales person is the “Assistant Buyer”. The key to sales success is simply to sincerely have the buyer’s best interest at heart.

When you produce a product that goes through distribution channels, or when you offer a service business to business, the funds your buyer has to buy from you came from the sale of their product or service. If you are selling direct to the consumer, you still have to recognize that they have to work for the income, one way or another, that enables them to buy your product.

Everybody who sells products or services wants to sell more. The ultimate question from your prospect is: “How does your product or service help me sell my product or service?” or “How can you help me make more money?” That’s why positioning your sales pitch as enhancing theirs is so effective.

Here are some ways your product or service can help your customer’s bottom line:

1. Reduce his overhead cost per unit sold. He has to pay rent, lights, power, insurance, staff, cleaning, etc., whether he sells your product quickly or slowly. If it’s a fast seller, his cost per sale is reduced. He improves his ROI on his capital investment, maintenance, advertising, and staffing.

2. Increase his profits with lower acquisition costs and, consequently, higher profit margins on your product. Give him a volume purchase program that enables a lower retail price and increased volume resulting in higher profits per month.

3. Make his retail environment more attractive with seasonal point of sale materials and promotional programs geared to the theme of the given holiday. Make your displays festive decorations to his retail space.

4. Increase his business with local promotions and support for neighborhood causes. Use Worthy Cause Marketing to bring in customers who have a social reason to buy your product. Let the membership of the non-profit you support know where your product is for sale in his neighborhood.

5. Sell him a product or service that makes him more attractive and more competitive to his clients or retail customers. Give him the best price in your category, or an area-wide exclusive for an introductory period.

6. Add value to his total sales package. Is there something you can sell him that makes what he’s selling more valuable, adds an extra feature or delivers another benefit – like a guarantee, excellent customer service or loyalty program? Does your product give him “green” bragging rights?

7. Improve his personnel’s efficiency by providing training, benefits or tools his staff can use to increase his sales. Help him find and keep good people.

These are just a few examples of how you can help your buyer increase profits and do his job more efficiently. When you focus on what your buyer is trying to do, you can quickly get a clue as to what you can do to help him increase his sales. Adding value to his sales efforts with your product allows him to say to his customers, “But wait, there’s more!”

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Grow Your Business Faster by Sharing the Wealth

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:19:46 +0000

Henry Ford used to say he’d rather have 1% of what a hundred others made working for him, than 100% of what he made by himself. Some business owners want to have it all, but in the process, cut off the very folks they need to get what they want.

Our business colleagues have chastised us for “overpaying” our sales people. They’d say, “Aren’t you afraid they will make more than you?” Actually, we had several sales people who made more than we did.

When we looked at the efficiencies of scale, the value of stability, and the increase in sales, we knew we were doing the right thing. So, why should you apply this winning philosophy to your business?

1. Reduce Your Turnover. Turnover is the largest hidden cost in business. It can take up to six months to find and train a new person. There is no guarantee that this new person will work out, either. You may have to start all over again with someone new. This can go on for quite a while until you get the right person.

Now you have someone who will be under-producing until he or she is fully trained. You also lose the time of the new hire’s trainer, who now has two jobs to do. Both jobs suffer. And the relationships built by the person who left could either be dropped or taken away by the departing employee. These must be re-built.

Remember, top performers who get a “piece of the action” are generally loyal and truly concerned about the welfare of your business.

2. Attract the Go-Getters. People who know they are excellent at their jobs want to work for a company that compensates them based on their performance. People who are less productive can’t afford to work for a company that has performance-based compensation plans.

When your job candidates ask where your profit centers are and how that flows into their paychecks, you should realize you are talking to a go-getter. Keep your performance metrics well thought out and achievable.

Rewarding for growth over same month last year is a good start. Averaging last year’s prior and subsequent months with the same month will smooth out most anomalies. Renegotiate profit-sharing bonuses annually.

3. It’s Free! If you know the profit of your business now, and you know your rate of growth for the past few years, any increase in that rate of growth attributable to your people’s performance is “found money.” When you cut an employee in for a piece of your increased profit, he is motivated to produce even more. It really costs you nothing. Just make sure the payment is tied into profitability, and not based solely on “growth.”

You are paying too much for labor when you pay for “attendance” alone. It’s their production you really want, because that is where your profits come from.

Why settle for 100% of a smaller pie when you can have more pie by taking a smaller piece of the larger pie others helped you get. When it comes to growing your business fast, it pays to share the wealth.

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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