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Chances are,
you have some great ideas on ways to increase profits at your
company. But it takes more than ideas to make progress. It
takes specific goals and a plan that will put feet under your
ideas.
Set up a profit enhancement road map within the
next year at your company by following these 12 steps:
1. Select critical profit projects you
want to work on and
determine the target results for each project. For example,
you may want to increase sales by 10 percent or reduce
order-processing time by one day.
2. Assign a "Profit Champion" on your
staff for each project. This person will be responsible for heading up and
monitoring the effort.
3. List the benefits of each project.
These might involve
the company, manager, staff or customers.
4. Predict outside roadblocks.
Identify obstacles
and determine how you will deal with them. These might
involve other departments, management, customers or
suppliers.
5.
Anticipate why your Profit Champions might go off
track. When
employees have to start doing things differently, they may
veer off course. For example, let's say the sales people
have to meet one night a week to get the extra training
needed.
6.
Determine how results will be measured
and
establish employee rewards. Creating long-and-short-term
rewards will help keep employees on board and motivated to
reach your profit goals.
7. List resources required to
accomplish the project. Resources might include information, field experts,
time with executive management, and even intangibles such as
support dealing with other employees. Make sure your Profit
Champions have access to the resources and are empowered to
use them.
8. Break the profit project down into subtasks.
List the activities
your Profit Champions need to perform to accomplish the
goal.
9. Assign due dates for each subtask.
Keep deadlines
reasonable.
10. Make a "To-Do" list for each subtask.
Start with the
earliest due date.
11. Keep in contact with your
Profit Champions. Hold employees to deadlines and reporting
requirements. In meetings, ask them if they have any
additional thoughts for profit ideas seeded by the work
they've been doing.
12. Empower your staff members to make real and
lasting change. Coach your Profit Champions to overcome obstacles,
experiment with new ideas and succeed.
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